Going for Housing Growth programme

The Going for Housing Growth programme (GfHG) is part of the Government’s broader plan to tackle New Zealand’s ongoing housing shortage.

GfHG is about enabling more homes to be built

GfHG is structured around three pillars that make system changes to address the underlying causes of the housing supply shortage. These are: 

  1. Freeing up land for urban development, including removing unnecessary planning barriers
  2. Improving infrastructure funding and financing to support urban growth
  3. Providing incentives for communities and councils to support growth.

Together, these three pillars have an objective of: improving housing affordability by significantly increasing the supply of developable land for housing, both inside and at the edge of our urban areas.

We work alongside other agencies to deliver the pillars

GfHG is a large programme of work. HUD works with other agencies including: the Ministry for the Environment, Department of Internal Affairs, the Treasury, Infrastructure Commission, Ministry of Transport, and others as needed.

Pillar 1: Freeing up land for urban development

In July 2024 the Government announced decisions requiring councils to free up land for housing. These changes are intended to be implemented through amendments to the Resource Management Act and the National Policy Statement on Urban Development.

The decisions include: 

Introducing Housing Growth Targets

  • New Housing Growth Targets introduced for Tier 1 and 2 councils, requiring them to enable 30 years of feasible housing capacity in their district plans, using ‘high’ population growth projections. 
  • New requirement that 'price indicators' (such as the difference in the price between land zoned for rural and urban use) do not deteriorate over time.
  • New central government tools to monitor council compliance and a mandate to take action where there is unjustified non-compliance.

Enabling greenfield growth

  • Councils prohibited from imposing rural-urban boundary lines in planning documents (but can still have rurally zoned land).
  • Government investigating options to require councils to plan for 50 years of growth in their Future Development Strategies (up from 30) and be more responsive to private plan changes.

Intensification in the right places

  • Tier 1 councils must enable appropriate levels of density across their urban areas, having regard to demand and access to different services.
  • Tier 1 councils must deliver housing intensification along 'strategic transport corridors' (for example, key bus routes).
  • Tier 1 councils must directly offset any housing capacity lost due to reasons such as ‘special character’ elsewhere.

Mixed-use development

  • Tier 1 and 2 councils must enable activities such as cafes, dairies, and other retail across their urban areas, and especially in areas where Tier 1 councils are required to enable six or more storey developments.
  • Industrial-type activities can still be kept away from housing.

Balconies and floor area requirements

  • Councils cannot set minimum floor area requirements for apartments and other houses or require balconies.
  • Developers can still choose to provide balconies and size dwellings in line with demand from buyers.

Making the Medium Density Residential Standards (MDRS) optional

  • Currently, under the MDRS, Tier 1 councils are required to enable up to three houses of up to three storeys per site without a resource consent.
  • The MDRS will become optional for councils, once they have demonstrated compliance with their Housing Growth Target.
  • Customised requirements for councils that haven’t completed current plan change processes (see Factsheet: Council process to implement Going for Housing Growth (PDF, 151 KB)).

Pillar 2: Improvements to infrastructure funding and financing tools to support urban growth

In February 2025, the government announced decisions on the second stage of the Going for Housing Growth programme (GfHG), with improvements to infrastructure funding and financing tools to help get more housing built.

As a package these changes will provide councils and developers with a flexible funding and financing toolkit to respond to growth pressures and deliver infrastructure to land zoned for housing development. This is expected to reduce the current cross-subsidisation by ratepayers.

Decisions include:

Replacing development contributions with a development levy system

Shifting to development levies will provide councils and other infrastructure providers, such as, water council-controlled organisations, with increased flexibility to charge developers for the overall cost of growth infrastructure across an urban area.

Councils and other infrastructure providers will still be required to use identified infrastructure projects to calculate levies. However, they’ll be able to adapt plans to respond to growth and use development levy revenue to build the infrastructure needed to support housing and urban development.    

Key features of development levies:

  • The purpose of development levies is to ensure councils (and other infrastructure providers) charge developers a proportionate amount of the total cost of capital expenditure necessary to service growth over the long term.
  • Levies will be calculated based on expected levels of growth and aggregate growth costs for each urban area.
  • Separate levies will be maintained for each service, such as drinking water, wastewater, stormwater, transport, reserves, and community infrastructure.
  • Councils providing a service to part of a levy zone with particularly high growth costs, will have discretion to charge an additional high-cost asset levy on top of the base levy for that service.
  • Development levies will be subject to regulatory oversight and councils will be required to ensure they’re setting appropriate charges.
  • Councils will have discretion to phase in any transition to higher charges under the levy system to manage impacts on local development.

Making changes to improve the Infrastructure Funding and Financing Act

The government is making a number of amendments to improve the effectiveness of the IFF Act, particularly for developer-led projects. This includes:

  • Broadening the scope of the IFF Act so levies can be used in a wider range of circumstances.
  • A streamlined levy development and approvals process, particularly for proposals supported by landowners that would be subject to the levy.
  • Other changes to improve the flexibility of the IFF Act and support its use for a range of infrastructure projects.

Improving the flexibility of targeted rates for growth infrastructure

The Government is also making changes to enable a council to set targeted rates that apply when a rating unit (for example, a separate property) is created at subdivision stage. This change will support councils to apply the principle of ‘growth pays for growth’ in two ways:

  • Councils will now be able to set targeted rates that apply only to new developments
  • Councils will be able to use targeted rates and development levies together, where projects benefit existing residents and provide for growth. 

Next steps

Further work is currently underway on detailed design of Pillar 2 improvements to infrastructure funding and financing tools. The legislation to implement these changes expected to be introduced in September 2025 and enacted in mid-2026. There will be opportunities for public feedback as part of this process.

Details about how Pillar 1 will be implemented will be announced in the coming months and decisions on Pillar 3 will be made in due course.

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