Board briefed on housing intensification

Earlier this month the Waipapa/Papanui-Innes Community Board received a public briefing from Christchurch City Council staff on rules regarding housing intensification. The purpose of this briefing was to provide an overview of the current planning rules regarding housing intensification as well as potential future changes coming from the Government, in response to community concerns regarding intensification.

Council staff had previously presented the same briefing to the Council’s Urban Development and Transport Committee, before embarking on a series of public briefings to Community Boards. In the case of our Board, a number of members of the public were in attendance and were able to ask questions of staff.

In a bid to improve access, our Board live-streams our public meetings so that those who cannot attend can follow along online, and/or view the recording afterwards. We do this on a best-efforts basis using our own technology at zero cost to the ratepayer – an approach that comes with some limitations. Embedded below is the video from the housing intensification briefing – as you will see this has been streamed using a single webcam with limited video quality. Staff giving the briefing can be heard very well, however some of the questions from the floor not so much – apologies for that.

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Plan change proposed for visitor accommodation

Update: This morning the Council’s Urban Development and Transport Committee approved the public notification of a proposed change to the District Plan. The proposal relates to the use of residential dwellings for visitor accommodation (e.g. Airbnb and HomeAway/Bookabach-type activities), and has hit the headlines recently, with some individuals and groups arguing the changes are unnecessary or go too far, and others that they don’t go far enough. What’s being proposed, and what are the next steps in the process?

The Council’s January 2020 discussion document (available here)

In February this year I attended a Papanui drop-in session as part of the Council’s consultation on potential changes to the Christchurch District Plan around managing home-share accommodation. What I found interested at the time was that of the estimated 1600-plus listings in Christchurch on the likes of Air BnB etc for unhosted accommodation (where the owner did not live on site), only a ‘handful’ were compliant with the existing District Plan requirements, specifically the need for a Resource Consent for a property to be used in that way.

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