Murdoch Dryden from Creating Communities

Murdoch Dryden is clearly proud of his handiwork. He’s a third-generation developer in the area: his grandfather ran the earthworks company that graded much of the suburb and his father’s construction firm built the first Nosh foodstore, at the bottom of Apirana Ave. Now, Murdoch is a director of Creating Communities, along with Hopper Developments (the group behind Pauanui Waterways), Arrow Arcus (a development arm of Arrow International) and South Auckland developer Chris Jones.

Dryden is a big fan of a new assimilation strategy called mixed tenure — private homes and state and private rentals all in together on the same streets. He takes me to the corner of Castledine Cres and Merfield St to show it off.

There are three new two-storey houses. Pick the state house. I can’t. The façades are all different; inside, the floor plans are almost identical. The privately owned dwellings have an ensuite, more expensive fittings and a double garage.

It’s state housing incognito and the revival of an older policy known as “pepper potting”. Until the late 1940s, Maori were excluded from state housing, but from 1948, with increasing Maori migration to cities, Maori families were “pepper-potted” into Pakeha neighbourhoods to encourage their assimilation.

The policy collapsed as more Maori, partly due to their lower-than-average incomes, were accommodated in state housing. Areas of concentration developed: Porirua, South Auckland — and Tamaki, planned and built in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Housing NZ still owns 57 per cent of the sections there and is said to accommodate a further 20 per cent of its tenants in the area in private rentals.

Dryden (42) grew up in an ex-state house nearby, in Edmund St, St Heliers. He says the trouble with most of the old GI state houses is that they were plonked, with little regard to the street or sun, in the middle of large 800-900sqm sites, on timber piles with steps down to the back.

Does he think they have good bones? “No, not for a moment. A lot have good bones, but you have got to strip off all the fibrolite cladding and deal with dampness issues and get rid of the asbestos out of the vinyl.”

It’s poor housing stock that needs renovating anyway, he says. And if you’ve got someone living alone in a three-bedroom house on a 900sqm section, in a city screaming “housing shortage”, why wouldn’t you move them to a better home and redevelop the site?

“I defy anyone to not buy into the logic of what’s going on.”

Creating Communities, he says, is “getting rid of 156 houses that are past their use-by date and replacing them with 78 houses which are state of the art”. It is also contracted to build 153 new privately owned dwellings, but can build more, possibly up to 213. Current density rules permit a total of 330 homes on the 156 sections which are, on average, 840sqm. At maximum density, sections would be about 400sqm, though as a Special Housing Area, even greater density is possible.

As well as 78 state houses, another requirement is 39 affordable homes — to be achieved, says Dryden, by complying with the government’s Welcome Home scheme. That is, a house for less than $550,000 to be purchased by a household with income of less than $120,000.

The first two three-bedroom houses sold for less than their CVs (capital valuations). They were in Merfield St, and fetched $750,000 and $770,000, against CVs of $815,000 and $835,000 respectively.

Below CV in Auckland? Unheard of: fallout from the protests, possibly, and from the graffiti attacks during the sale process.

At 45 Apirana Ave, 12 new homes have replaced three 1950s two-bedroom duplexes. Six are for Housing NZ and the others — four three-bedroom and one two-bedroom — have been snapped up from $760,000 to $795,000. The remaining four-bedroomer with a double garage has an asking price of $900,000.

Dryden wonders if he’s selling too cheaply and he’s frustrated by the slow progress — just 24 new homes have been built. (They haven’t started yet at Wai o Taiki Bay, though, where state houses with sea views will make way for multi-million-dollar mansions and Creative Communities will make a killing.)

Already, the speed at which the new houses have been sold shows the area is highly desirable. Perhaps, in the Auckland market, it’s even a bargain. I suggest that with good design and tenancy management, such as briefly occurred at Talbot Park in 2007, it’s possible to create good state-rental communities.

“Yes,” says Dryden, “but if you set up an environment where it self-polices, then you’re not reliant on someone walking around with a stick.” Self-policing — does that mean property-owning neighbours complaining when state renters move in and lower the tone? Dryden is convinced it will work. “I don’t think putting all the poor people in the same place is the answer.”

Many of the residents of Glen Innes have successfully brought up families there over a couple of generations. Doesn’t that show that long-term renting — the original “house for life” policy — works?

“There are not many people in private rentals who have had the luxury of being in a house for 50 years, so there is a double standard there. While I have got a lot of sympathy for [them], they are not actually getting put out in the street.”

A house for life was once considered the New Zealand dream. Does that only apply to those who can afford to buy?

“I’m sceptical that the ‘house for life’ was anything other than a slogan,” says Dryden. “I’m not sure it’s ever been codified in law.”