Townhouses! Where will the kids go?

Sometimes townhouses are presented as replacing housing that traditional families would otherwise have lived in — though is this actually the case?

Firstly, there is some truth in this. In New Zealand, we have long had district plan restrictions that directly or indirectly favoured the construction and retention of single family homes. This was sometimes justified under the idea of it being better for the 'traditional Kiwi family'.

This has led to an under serving of households that don't fit within the 'nuclear model' by a 'one-size-fits-all' housing stock. Now the loosening of district plan requirements is finally seeing a diverse range of housing options to fill this need. Backfilling a shortage decades in the making with a slug of development designed primarily for small households of adults.

But in a twist, the areas with significant townhouse developments are also the few places with growing numbers of children (in our established suburbs anyway). The following maps are from the 2023 census.

Take an inner suburb of Christchurch, St Albans East, where the number of occupied dwellings, predominantly townhouses, has increased 33% in the 10 years to 2023 (red being higher growth, blue being lower). The number of children in the same area has risen by 45% in 10 years. A similar pattern emerges for many suburbs with housing growth in the area.

At the complete opposite end of the spectrum we have Devonport, Auckland. A sought after suburb, locked down from redevelopment with strict heritage controls. The number of occupied dwellings is static. The population of children under 15 there has fallen nearly 40% in the 10 years to 2023, with school rolls falling significantly. We can assume that many families bought homes in Devonport towards the end of the last century, only for the kids to move out of home, leaving two adults in retirement today. There's a pattern here.

What can we learn from this?

Families go where housing is built, and are chased from places where we prevent building.

If we want to do best by them, we need housing, housing, and more housing. Christchurch has been fortunate to have a relatively permissive post-earthquake district plan (rules on what/where you can build) so we haven’t seen the exodus of children from popular inner suburbs like in Wellington and Auckland. Though there is still much more to be done!

We believe there are more gains to be had in further relaxation of district plan rules, such as adopting the MDRS. But crucially, we also need building materials competition reform, and building code reform.

Housing costs play a major role in where parents choose to live, or even if people feel comfortable having kids in the window of life where it is possible and safe. Everything that brings that cost down improves outcomes for young families.

Of course, the places with the fastest growth in the population of children aren’t in the townhouse suburbs either, rather in Rolleston or the urban growth areas of Auckland. Or more cynically, Brisbane.

The core of Ōtautahi offers a lot for kids, Margaret Mahy playground, Tūranga, Parakiore, and Hagley Park, all readily accessible independently or with parents. If we want kids to have the opportunity to grow up in these places that generations before us have, we need to (continue to) improve the offering in the city for families.

Aside from continuing to work on housing costs, we think Christchurch should play to the strengths that inner suburbs naturally have. The density to support more amenities. Close proximity to jobs, schools, grandparents, cousins, friends, supermarkets, cycleways and fast, frequent public transport. Maximise the ability of kids to safely take themselves places, minimise the amount of time parents need to spend commuting or running errands.

Concrete actions could be bus service upgrades, pedestrian and bike infrastructure improvements, play spaces, parks and a district plan that enables homes and businesses to be built in a mixed-use fashion. Finally, of course things that improve amenity for everyone: public toilets, street trees, and good, reliable infrastructure.