Source
https://www.branz.co.nz/pubs/research-reports/er107/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
BRANZ External Research Report ER107 (Mitchell, James, Cram & Glaudel, June 2025) is a housing-systems study of low-to-moderate-income households with limited equity — those whose modest assets shut them out of public/council housing while the market prices them out. Combining a rapid international literature review, Household Economic Survey analysis, 27 industry interviews, financial-feasibility modelling and a sociohistorical/institutional systems analysis, it sizes the problem (194,100 LMI renters in housing stress, 82,800 in severe stress as at June 2022; younger renters, older renters, disabled-person households and Māori most affected), diagnoses it as structural (ability-to-pay sits far below the yields needed to build affordable housing, so private capital won’t flow), and finds none of the modelled shared-equity/affordable-rental solutions affordable to the target subgroups without subsidised capital. Its recommendations centre on sustainable low-cost capital insulated from political cycles — inclusionary zoning, government-guaranteed bond financing (the Community Housing Funding Agency), build-to-rent subsidy and capital grants — plus distinct legal status and standardised documentation for alternative tenures. A direct sibling to OT_054 (ER81), it anchors the thesis’s NZ housing-affordability and community-tenure argument.
Key claims
See key_claims frontmatter (7 claims, cited to section). Quantitative figures are from the Household Economic Survey (year ending June 2022) and Census 2021. feeds: [] — thesis background, not an NI input.
Key thesis insights
- The affordability crisis is structural, not behavioural. The gap between what LMI households can pay and the yields required to build affordable housing means private/impact capital cannot close it — only sustainable subsidised capital or structural change can. This is the central evidence for the thesis argument that community/alternative housing cannot scale on market terms alone. OT_058
- Alternative tenures need legal scaffolding to work. Distinct legal status for alternative tenures, and standardised tenure documentation, are repeatedly identified as the enablers that unlock finance and acceptability — the institutional preconditions for cohousing, shared equity and papakāinga to move from niche to scale. Corroborates the alternative-tenure taxonomy and “subsidy always required” finding in OT_054. OT_058
- Planning rules are a barrier to community design. Council planning rules and regulations hinder innovative design, density and communal space — directly constraining the cohousing/intentional-community form the project studies (cf. earthsong_ranui, tui_community, and the Tasman district-plan constraints in REG_003). OT_058
- Māori housing and collective land. Specialised Māori providers and support for development on multiply-owned (collective) land are a distinct strand — the NZ Indigenous parallel to community-on-collective-land, now under-resourced after grant programmes were discontinued. Links OT_051 (MAIHI). OT_058
- The Accommodation Supplement critique. >$2 bn/year of demand-side subsidy has not reduced housing stress and would need to more than double to do so — evidence that demand-side support without supply-side/structural reform entrenches rather than resolves the problem. OT_058
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- (none — this report resolves no open target.)
Research gaps
- The international case studies in ER107’s appendices — South Korea rural cohousing for older women and supporting Native American home ownership — are summarised in-report and noted as potential leads for the cohousing/Indigenous-tenure thread, not raised as formal research targets.
Connections
Links to
Sources (3): OT_051 · OT_054 · REG_003
Cases (2): Earthsong Eco-Neighbourhood · Tui Community
Referenced by