Timeless development models for our time

The hidden homeless are all around us

A home is a life-changing event for them

Home for elders with kids & grandkids next door

Mobile homes come in various designs

Made all over New Zealand

Summary: A mobile home is the most efficient and cost-effective housing for people who cannot afford market rents or home prices. They can be parked on land owned by whanau, family or friend, and when the need for them passes, they can be towed away leaving nothing more than bare soil. They are not buildings (fixed to land) but chattel (personal property). For decades, local governments left them alone, because as chattel, they did not fit the rules for real property. For the most part, they were purchased or leased by poor people. However, more recently, trend-setting, tech-savvy young people rebranded mobile homes as tiny homes of wheels, and began parking them in “nice” neighbourhoods where grumpy neighbours complained to their local council. Lacking clarity, some councils began to issue abatement notices and notices to fix, and when these were appealed to MBIE Determinations, there was a radical shift in interpretation. Government effectively declared was on mobile homes and their constituency, poor people. This war needs to be examined and stopped by elected officials.

Problem:  ;The number of hidden homeless – people living in cars, tents, garages and overcrowded conditions has grown over the past decade. The waiting list for state housing has exploded since 2017, increasing by over 400 families every month.

In 2018, Central Government proposed KiwiBuild, 100,000 new homes. As of May 2022, it’s built under 1,400. They cost too much, they take to long to build, and in the meantime the hidden homeless ranks grow.

Solution: Over the past two decades, a domestic mobile home industry has arisen – a one or two bedroom home with kitchen and bath manufactured in factories on a chassis trailer and towed to site. Made in two weeks, installed on site in two hours and cost under $80,000 or lease for $400 a week, with a lease–to-purchase option in 6-years. Especially in North Island, where the subtropical climate is amenable to small-home living, mobile homes should be the sort of home-grown solution the government would support. But the opposite is happening.

Governments war on poor people

Imagine you buy a car, and to get it on the road you had to pay $25,000 in registration fees that would take months to process. And during that process, any government official could demand changes to the design. That’s what happens when one seeks resource and building consents for a new building. Indeed $25,000 is sometimes modest, it could cost $50,000 and in some cases, after spending considerable money, be denied.

Mobile homes are not buildings, but the local government consenting departments apply the “duck test” saying if it looks like a building and is used like a building, it must be a building and therefore must have resource and building consents to be used. There is a certain irony that the duck test saying actually was about a mechanical duck, that looked, quacked and even poo’d like a duck but was not a duck.

Councils issue abatement notices and notices to fix. In most cases, the targets of their notices are poor and overwhelmed by the officers. They pay or cave.  A few, like Alan Dall, crowdsource to fight, appealed it to MBIE who backed the council and then to District Court, where the judge issued a scathing condemnation of MBIE and the council, finding for Dall. One would have expected councils and MBIE to back off after this, but they persist in their insistence that mobile homes are structures.

Government out of touch with reality

The regulatory ethos that has overtaken both central and local government takes the view that everything must be regulated, and under user pays, that their departmental funding for regulatory enforcement must be added to the cost of that which is regulated. Thus a mobile home that costs $80,000 can attract an additional $40,000 in both government fees, and consultant fees to write the application in a form the council will accept.

Planners no longer enable people and communities to provide for their social, economic and cultural wellbeing,  to quote the purpose of the RMA, they disable the people and communities. Councils no longer “play a broad role in promoting the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of their communities, taking a sustainable development approach” as required by the Local Government Act 2002.

The fundamental problem comes from the policy of User Pays. While governments write noble values statements, the message from senior management to line staff is to place the pecuniary interest of the government – raising money through fees, charges, contributions and fines – over the public interest for which government exists.

Action required

Include mobile homes in the portfolio of affordable housing solutions. Do not classify them as buildings, structures or realty as long as they remain mobile. Work with the industry to ensure acceptable standards of health, safety and durability – noting that the industry already adheres to such standards because it is bad business to not… and because existing consumer and liability laws demand responsible design and manufacture.