Minister of Housing

Going for Housing Growth: New and improved infrastructure funding and financing tools

Extract:

New and improved infrastructure funding and financing tools will help get more houses built and address New Zealand’s housing crisis, Housing Minister Chris Bishop and Local Government Minister Simon Watts say. ...

The Government will make five key changes to New Zealand’s funding and financing toolkit that will support urban growth:

1. Replacing Development Contributions with a Development Levy system, which enables councils and other infrastructure providers to charge developers a proportionate amount of the total cost of capital expenditure necessary to service growth over the long term. Separate levies will be maintained for each infrastructure service, with levy zones expected to cover a pre-defined urban area. Levies will be calculated based on overall growth costs and expected levels of growth.
2. Establishing regulatory oversight of Development Levies to ensure charges are fair and appropriate by restricting local authority discretion about various matters, such as setting the methodology used to allocate project costs.
3. Increasing the flexibility of targeted rates by allowing councils to set targeted rates that only apply to new developments, and enabling targeted rates and levies to be used together where projects benefit existing residents and provide for growth.
4. Improving the effectiveness of the Infrastructure Funding and Financing (IFF) Act, particularly for developer-led projects. This work is being led by Parliamentary Under-Secretary Simon Court.
5. Broadening existing tools to support value capture and cost recovery by enabling the IFF Act to be used for major transport projects (such as those led by NZTA). ...

See also

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