Last week’s town hall meeting in Khandallah on Wellington City Council’s proposed medium-density re-zoning was an eye-opener. I have been exceptionally frustrated by town planners’ inability to zone enough housing to meet the demands of a growing population. But attending just one of these meetings can really make you sympathise with the council planning officers.

The crowd in attendance was overwhelmingly elderly, though a few younger faces dotted the crowd. The meeting’s timing, coinciding with both younger kids’ bedtimes and with another parent meeting on at the school, meant for a particular demographic mix.

And while those who felt they could be harmed if a neighbour sold to a developer were well represented, those who might live in new townhouses certainly were not.

Council planners seemed stuck. Because council started the consultation very early on, objectors damned them for not having presented a concrete plan that residents could consider. But had council come to the meeting with a more fixed plan, they would have been damned for having presented a fait accompli.

But council also did not make life easy for itself because of a few previous mistakes that caused a lot of public distrust.

People at the meeting reported of non-notified developments that went in next door, that encroached on their property, and substantially harmed them. Those concerns seemed to resonate.

But those very legitimate concerns then were bundled with worries about changes to neighbourhood “character” and the design of other peoples’ buildings – all of which seemed a bit of a coded language for keeping poorer and more ethnically diverse people out of a pretty homogeneous neighbourhood. Expensive design mandates price poorer people out.

Fundamentally, we seem stuck in a very bad situation.

Because notified consents draw out objectors who are not directly affected but who can raise nebulous concerns about neighbourhood character, fewer building consents are notified. But because a lot of people then have not been notified when a new development is going in right next door, we get problems.

Shifting to allowing more medium density housing but with greater consultation of truly affected neighbours seems the obvious solution. Getting from here to there – well, I wish the council planners luck. And I sympathise with them rather more than I used to.