Hayden Woods
Financial independence means freedom. No wonder the system wants to keep people trapped under a crippling debt burden or reliant on government-controlled welfare. No wonder housing affordability is the weapon of choice. The population is divided into the Haves and Have-nots, because even the Haves are easy to control when they have too much to lose, with their net worth all tied up in a house that they can’t take with them.
The Tiny Home movement is a way of escaping the system. It involves accepting huge compromises on lifestyle but, for many, the freedom is worth it. Unfortunately, the biggest obstacle is not the cost; it is the council.
Anyone involved in the movement knows of the horror stories and twenty years of legal battles as bureaucrats try to stop people from escaping the system. The battle against the building consent has been won and lost and won again for tiny homes on wheels. They are considered vehicles, not buildings. But that only applies to the Building Act. The battle against the resource consent has been lost. The Resource Management Act allows councils to simply change the definition of building to include pretty much everything, then use existing rules to make tiny homes illegal.
So it was with interest that I read a Stuff article about the new Waikato District Mayor, Jacqui Church, living in a caravan during work days to be close to council meetings. It is a smart decision to save the long commute from Port Waikato to Ngaruawahia. It doesn’t affect anyone else, so why would anyone think it could be against the council’s own rules?
For many other people who have done similar things, this has been an expensive and painful question. Council staff have shown no mercy, no common sense, no compassion. You are only allowed one dwelling per section, so to live in a tiny home is cheating the whole region!
I wrote to the council, pointing out from experience that the mayor required a resource consent and was actually breaking the law. My intention was not actually to stop her, rather to change the rules. As you’d expect, my complaint was ignored until I followed up a month later. Delay is the first line of defence, in the hope that I would give up.
Denial is the second line. The Monitoring Team Leader, Tanya O’Shannessey, began with an apology for the delay, but no reason for it. She had apparently ‘fully investigated the matter’, which I would assume means checking the District Plan rulebook, and won’t ‘be taking any further action’.
She refers to the now-clearly-established legal precedent in relation to the Building Act to get the mayor off the hook, but then dives into the realms of fantasy, claiming that the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) agrees that a caravan is not a building under the Resource Management Act or any district plan.
This is directly contradicted by MBIE’s Tiny House Guidance, section 9, page 21:
The Building Act and the Resource Management Act are very different pieces of legislation, and there are different definitions and requirements under each. Although your tiny house may not be defined as a building under the Building Act, it may still be a building as defined in a district plan adopted by your council under the Resource Management Act.
As it happens, the Waikato District Plan defines a building as including temporary and movable constructions located on land. That is a pretty broad definition because it was changed a few years ago specifically to catch tiny homes. It does exclude any motorised vehicle that could be moved under its own power, but that does not apply to caravan use in this case.
So much for the ‘full’ investigation. A resource consent is required.
The mayor gets a free pass to continue breaking the law while the common people will get charged thousands of dollars. Rules for thee but not for me.
I don’t actually want the mayor to get kicked out or fined. I just want other people to be allowed to live in the same way that she thinks is a good idea. Jacqui, how about changing the rules for everyone?
Reference
Click to access tiny-houses-guidance-mbie.pdf
District Plan definition
