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dwardjspring · 4 years ago

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Dave Garland. R.I.P

It was a Sunday Morning in New Zealand. I woke to messages from Mirka and Viv and I couldn’t believe what they said. No… That couldn’t be. I couldn’t really believe what they said. I chose to push it aside and went for my normal Sunday morning swim in the lake, with the club. I was out for over an hour and a quarter. Long swim. People were wondering where I’d gone. And all I could think about was Dave the whole time out there, the water flowing around me like moving through time and memories.

Since then I’ve read online in the MTB press and various pages and peoples posts of Dave's passing. The word ’legend’ is often used and I think apt in the world of mountain bike suspension tuning and DH race set up. It’s fair to say he knew everything there was to know and more importantly, how to deliver it effectively. ‘Mercurial’ would be another fair use word of his knowledge in that dark art.

Dave left behind his wife Mirka. They had been married 4 years or so. Not long. And his daughter Niva. Now 21.

I read Niva’s post on her Facebook timeline later that same Sunday morning - of her feelings for her Dad and how she could have acted differently towards him.

There have been a number of eulogies for Dave, particularly this one by Si Paton, but so too, I want to say something from myself about my good friend Dave. This is my story of Dave. Written from my perspective. I’ve written it because I need to write it.

Dave arrived into my life in 1999 brought into Grip DH Mountain Bike magazine prior to Issue One whilst we were still in the planning stage by Editor Jerry Dyer, whom I’d headhunted from Dirt Magazine. Jerry ‘HAD’ to have a technical editor and Dave was it. So I hired him, not that I think I had any say in the matter! Those were fantastic days at the Air Publications office in the middle of Worcester. We had a real buzz going with all the magazines functioning out of that top floor on Trinity Street. Viv Jenkins, whom I had known since 1990, or even a little earlier, through snowboarding, arrived at the offices not long after Dave, rustled up by Ad Manager Wendy as she needed more help in the advertising department, what with five publications pumping. Dave and Viv took a shine to each other. They both had a BMX background. On a night out on The Shambles with the whole crew in tow Dave and Viv hooked up. That very first connection, on that particular night resulted in Niva nine months later. It was as simple as that. A one time moment with an ongoing expected commitment once the pregnancy became clear, which I don’t think Dave or Viv were really ready for.

It turned out to be a tumultuous time for all of us at Air Publications because over that next nine months a great deal happened. Dave and Viv ended up living in our house for about a month. They’d given up their house with other Air Pub staffers and they were working for free as we were trying to find a buyer for the publishing business as it had hit some rocky ground. We thought we could rescue the business, but we couldn’t. The short version was the breakdown of Air Publications, the loss of all our jobs and the dissipation of a lot of action sports potential. But that’s another story…

Dave was particular. He was a details sort of guy. When Grip was doing studio photo shoots of the DH bikes, everything had to be perfect. The backdrop, the lighting, the bike and its arrangement (of course). But I mean perfect. He created the studio in a grimy area downstairs, which we weren’t actually renting but it was a forgotten area, doing nothing, so he and Jerry commandeered it. Dave made me buy all the backdrops and lighting equipment, because of course it had to be perfect. The photographer we ‘HAD’ to use (Jerry Dyer catch phrase), Paul Bliss, also had to deliver, which he always did anyway being just as particular as Dave. The outcome of all that perfection and graphic design deliberation over minutiae was Grip DH Mountain Bike magazine. You may not have even heard of it as we only managed three issues. Dave wrote, but writing was not his forté, but the content of what he was writing was standout. It was different. It elevated the magazine. He just needed some editing help. He had the vision on where DH MTB should go from where it was at that time, and he was every bit the magazine editor alongside Jerry. Grip eclipsed Dirt magazine, the established market leader for DH at the time, and between ‘them’ and ‘us’ there was a fair bit of rivalry. Funnily enough, after Grip folded, Dirt started to take on the look and feel Grip had crafted and the direction the industry needed to move towards. Dave had every part in that.

Dave and Viv had to make decisions and for them it involved moving to Chamonix in France to be in the heart of the European snowboard scene but importantly for Dave, a blossoming mountain bike community over the summer months. They went there to make a go of it, prior to the birth of their baby, because they really did love each other. Dave started at Zero G shop and started increasing the bike activity angle of the store.

Niva famously arrived early on the 1st January 2000, the first child of the new millennium to be born in Chamonix, France. One of life's little surprises that has always stuck with me. But it was hard for them both - Dave and Viv. No family around, little support in a foreign land, a language barrier, struggling to get by financially. He worked hard. And did long hours. Very long hours. I talked a lot with him regularly, visited the store a few times and the small flat in Cham where they lived. In 2000 I was also coincidentally working in France for Regis Rolland at A Snowboards. Dave told me things weren’t particularly good between him and Viv because of all these life pressures. I think he spent so long at the store as an escape. But Viv, now with a baby to take care of, was finding it harder. Isolated, no money, no Dave who was off ‘promoting’ the store, you know, having beers, shooting shit with the boys, riding bikes. Well, he just was not around...

One day towards the end of summer in 2000 from recollection, Dave got back from being away at a race, went home to their tiny flat to find Viv and Niva were gone. Gone. Nothing there. The place was empty. Everything was gone. They’d up and left. I don’t know the exact details here but Viv had taken Niva and left back to Liverpool.

That day or the very next day I just so happened to be collecting my bag from the Geneva airport arrivals carousel. There's about six carousels all laid out in a row. One of the end walls is entirely made of glass so people waiting in the arrivals hall on land side can see the incoming people fresh off their flight getting their bags. I was waiting, looking out through the glass looking for my pick up, and there was Dave looking right at me! I don’t know who was more surprised, me or him, but I quickly saw he was distraught. He told me what had happened. He had driven to Geneva to pick up his brother or relation, or maybe it was his mum, I can’t remember now, but he was not in a good way. We made a bunch of phone calls on my phone to people back in the UK trying to track Viv down, to find out where Viv may have gone. Dave didn’t know what to do, or what to do with himself. He was pacing around backwards and forwards in worry and frustration and a sort of anger. He realised he’d fucked up. He told me that.

Very soon after, Dave moved back to the UK to Chester in an effort to be close to Viv and his baby daughter Niva. He was making the effort. He’d packed it all in at the shop and left behind all that he had been trying to do. That was not the actions of a man who didn’t care. And from this period, with Dave back in the UK in Chester, with his estranged partner and daughter Niva not far away in Liverpool, this was when Stendec was born. Dave and I started Stendec together.

Dave had realised and understood that mountain bike suspension servicing and tuning was fast becoming ‘a thing’. And that it was only going to grow. His knowledge of this thing was from ‘source’. He seemed to have the source code, the alchemist's stone, from which all knowledge derived to put it in a way you may understand. He had the Gold. The know-how to turn lead into gold. He just ‘knew’ what to do with suspension. But he needed help with the set up, the creation of the company, the accounts, the finance, the day to day boring systems in order for Stendec to function. That was my role.

Do you know where the word Stendec came from? It was the last message sent by an aeroplane as it was flying over the Andes at the end of the 1940’s through thick clouds before it crashed into a mountainside. The morse code message was S.T.E.N.D.E.C. No one knows what it meant. There are conspiracy theories based on it. But essentially no one knows what it meant because it doesn’t mean anything. It could be anything we needed it to be. Dave had been mulling it over for ages, the name, and he loved the whole story behind that word, so that’s what it was. He came up with that name for the company.

In fact he loved coming up with words to describe a new product. ‘Black Box Technology’, ‘Tuning in a Box’, ‘The Shock Footprint’. He helped me with names for the A Snowboards 2001/02 range I was working on. He really wanted me to call one of the boards ‘The Vocoder’ - “voice code your ride”. He very nearly got his wish.

We had a small industrial unit upstairs in a building very close to Chester town centre. Dave signed for it at the end of March 2001. We’d go for sandwiches round the corner at lunch time. For a cider or beer or two (or four) after work. I’d drive up from Worcester for two or three days each week in my Citroen BX Turbo. It blew up on one occasion leaving me limping off the motorway. I can’t remember any more but I think I gave the car to him when I left for New Zealand. We’d plan the business, we’d work out what the race season was going to be and plan to be at as many races as possible. Pagey would drop by. So funny. Products were created talking in the workshop, drinking our cider/beers. The range of exclusive oils, the brake fluids, the silicon spray, the grease, the springs. That all came from Dave, he did all the sourcing work, and with the oils for instance, got the oil chemist to come up with a slightly different concoction to Dave’s requirements. Back then there were, like, ten different oil weights we needed, and each of them could be combined to create mid weight oils to be perfect in the forks and shocks. The marketing words around it all came from me, and we had the special genius of Ian Roxburgh as the packaging and logo designer. Ian was the long time senior graphic designer on all of the magazines of Air publications. I remember Dave saying we needed to make springs, so we went off on a factory visit to the spring factory in Birmingham he’d found watching them being made. Coiled, heated, tempered, the ends ground, the Stendec logo printed on the coil of each spring... It was all expensive, all those products. I don’t know if we really made any money, but hell, it was a fantastic brand all backed up by Daves race knowledge and ‘source’ code. It all added to the whole. It was greater than the sum of its parts that’s for sure. The springs eventually ended up being produced by Eibach and Dave even found a supplier of the elusive Titanium Spring. So cool.

Dave's knowledge was as much a hindrance as a benefit. When I was up in Chester in the workshop I was supposed to answer the phone to allow Dave the time to actually service the forks and shocks before dispatching them back out the door. But of course the phone would go and nobody wanted to talk with me, because one, they didn’t know who I was and two, I didn’t know shit (well, not the correct shit), they just wanted to talk with Dave. The true fountain of knowledge. So we quickly found we needed systems to allow Dave to work and talk.

During all this, Dave connected with Giant Bikes and proposed to them that Stendec be awarded the contract to run the Giant Bikes Dealer Demo program, and through that we had our first employee, Pete Crump. It was a fairly crammed itinerary and Pete would be up and down the country in a very big van demo-ing Giant Bikes to the shops of the UK. That happened for two or three years I think. And Michelin tyres. So many tyres, oh my god ...

I had by this time, March 2002, moved to New Zealand to live with my wife of the time, one daughter and a baby boy, but during the first five years of living in NZ I’d be back to the UK so much, still working in the snowboard industry and going to stay with Dave. I was practically commuting. Dave had moved to North Wales and bought the farmhouse based off the back of the ‘business’, but to be honest I don’t know how he managed to pull that off as there was barely enough to feed Dave let alone a mortgage. I certainly didn’t see any return of my startup funds. Through this period, which I think was a tough time mentally for Dave, it seemed a little hand to mouth for him at times. I was not on the scene any more for day to day contact.

Dave didn’t know where Niva was or what she was doing. Not really. He really dropped out of her life. I don’t know if that was because he just couldn’t be bothered or it was simply too difficult for him. Things just stacked against him as a man and a father. He wasn’t good at providing financial support. Not really. I saw that. Viv picked that up, but too, the impression I got from Dave was Viv didn’t make it easy for him to see Niva. There were a lot of road blocks put in place. I know there are two sides to every story and I don’t know Viv’s story I admit. I only know what Dave told me and he could be, at times, frugal with the full story. But from my own subsequent experience it seemed hard for Dave to see his daughter. I felt Dave wasn’t trying very hard anymore to make an effort. But I sort of think he gave up trying because it was simply too hard for him because of the external circumstances. I have gaps of time where I am not aware of what may or may not have occurred between the three of them as Niva grew older and into a young woman. But overall I never really fully understood that. I’m sorry. I cannot judge.

As I read on Niva’s Facebook post on the day Dave died, and as Niva’s mothers friend so wisely stated in one of the replies, all Niva’s disclosures were not about her own failings. Niva did nothing wrong. The parents' difficulties were not about her. It was the way the dice rolled for her. It's easy to have perfect vision looking backward about what you should have / could have done, about decisions you could have made, about a relationship you could have had. As Niva said, her future dreams, those she thought she would enjoy at some point in the future with her dad, it turns out were nothing other than fantasy. They will never be. A tough but realistic observation on her part, I thought, when I read it. When Niva was about 13 or so, I remember how things were from Dave's perspective and how he relayed it to me, things were not so good between himself and Niva through that adolescent period. Again, I know he did try but I think over that period, although he had made some headway with Niva, it went slightly awry. So subsequently, I think he gave up even trying to try. That’s my own personal observation.

Dave came out to NZ with his friend Kellie in 2004 or so. They stayed for a few days on a big country wide tour. Again, we had lots of discussions but eventually, over the fullness of time (one of Dave’s favourite sayings), we just slowed down our talks. We talked less and less over the years, a function of being out of sight, thus out of mind. I watched as the Stendec brand became Dave’s vehicle. Even though technically it was 50% mine, really it was all Dave’s. I was his initial helping hand. Watching Dave from the other side of the world via RedBull TV, I’d watch all the World Cup DH’s religiously. I’d see Dave doing what he did so well, spannering for household names now - to make them household names, and felt real pride to see him at that level. That's where he was meant to be.

I was surprised when I saw Dave got married! I didn’t know he was seeing anyone. I didn’t ask as to why. It was a slightly grey period when I was not up to play on what was what. Friend Kellie just wasn’t around any more. Mirka appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, but too, she really seemed to have brightened his day. Mirka gave Dave some zest again. I saw it written large through the ether. I could feel it. The evolution of the springs into the standalone brand Super Alloy Racing and how Mirka deals with that has been tremendous to watch at a high level, primarily through the Enduro World Series. And then equally it seemed, out of nowhere, Dave created Stendec Data Acquisition. I just thought ‘brilliant’. What a thing to do. Such a lot of detail and thought and understanding had to go into that creation and Dave could see too, as he always did, that it had to be relevant to the biker in the street. I was surprised to see it, but at the same time, not surprised at all it had come out of Dave's brain. Of course it did.

I think Dave was a real character of a person. A strong driver within his art. The term ‘artist’ I think would also be a fair label for him. One of a kind. Generous. Knowledgeable. But so too, flawed like we all are to some extent. He thought long and hard about it all. Just a tiny bit broken, not quite complete - Niva was always there but not there. I don’t think that ever sat well with him. Dave was really hit by not being able to see his daughter properly over the years, right back from that initial shock departure, and he really cared, and I think it's important for Niva to read and hear this from someone who spent time with him, just how much he did care. Though he wasn't the best perhaps at showing it, or trying to reach out.

I feel too I missed the boat in talking more with Dave these past years. He was hard to get a hold of especially with his non-compliance of social media and stuff, but we both could have tried harder. I certainly could have. Now it's too late. I’m sad about that. There’s still things to do and talks I still wanted to have with Dave. I feel some responsibility for not doing it. There’s a lesson there for us all.

Dave Garland - 1967 - Nov 28th 2020 - Rest in Peace

Top photo: Dave featured on a poster in the centre of the first Stendec catalog. He was a pretty handy rider.

Addendum:

I found this whilst hunting… The last paragraph says a lot about Dave’s support for his riders and friends riding.

-----Original Message-----

From: Dave. Garland [mailto:[email protected]]

Sent: 14 February 2003 20:54

To: [email protected]

Subject: madison stuff

Hi Rob here's the list of stuff we could really do with to help the season along.

10x Mavic 521 32h cd

4x mavic 321 32h cd

5x dura ace ss rear mechs

5x ultegra 12-27 9speed cassettes

4x DT swiss blk comp spokes 258

6x DT swiss blk comp spokes 260

2x DT swiss blk comp spokes 262

4x xt 9speed rh shifters

2x sp40 gear housing

20x teflon gear inner wire

that's it. its about £500 worth

I got the new crowns and they look the bollox, Romic's sending full factory

shocks in about two weeks.

CALENDER.

STENDEC/MICHELIN SUPER SERIES; MARCH 29/30

DRAGON RD 1/2 APRIL5/6

SDA RND 1 12/13 APRIL

MAXXIS CUP RND2 23-27 APRIL

NPS RND1 3 / 4

SDA RND2 10/11 MAY

NPS2 24/25 MAY

WC RND1 29MAY-2ND JUNE

WC RND2 10-13 JUNE

NPS RND3 21/22 JUNE

SDA CHAMPS 4-6 JULY FORT WILL

DRAGON 8/9 9/10 AUG

NPS NAT CHAMPS 25-27 JULY

STENDEC/MICH 2/3 AUG BALA LAKE NWALES

NPSRND 4 16/17 AUG

EURO CHAMPS 21-24 AUG

WORLDS LAGANO 4-7 SEPT

WC 5 11-14 SEPT

NPS 5 20/21 SEPT

DRAGON 12/13 4/5 OCT

THIS IS THE TIME TABLE.

I know it might seem alot but as you know we got things at stake this year, Ian is looking for big things this year, from you especialy. I will give you support like you aint seen, just give a 100% back and we'll go places. for you i think you have to get used to winning races again, dont matter what series it is A WIN IS A WIN and when you get used to winning you want to win everything.

We have the strongest team in briton this year and the best supported so everyone's gotta pull their weight.

speak soon

Dave

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dwardjspring · 6 years ago

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R.A.D magazine and the connection to UK snowboard magazines. 1993.

Reply on http://wearelookingsideways.com Facebook page post to Tim Leighton-Boyce podcast episode

Eddie Spearing: This was an interesting episode Matthew. As a skater too from that 80's / 90's time frame, RAD was a corner stone of what was going on in Britain intermingled with the other mags, Skateboard! being one of them. It was interesting to hear Tims take on his position and influence on UK skateboarding back then, almost as if he 'fell' into it because he could provide authentic images to the mag publishers at a time when they were hard to find. So it was a natural for him. Right place, right time. Whats interesting too was Tim always worked for the publishers, to a budget (and he got stung a few too many times it seems when they went bust) and it was when he decided to make the jump and BE the publisher that his, myself and Stig's life touched, although we've never met. Here's a little history of that moment, because maybe you didn't know, but Stig & I ran/edited/did the advertising for RAD for about a year in 1993/4 when the then publisher of RAD sold the title to Mark Kasprowsich, owner of ArcWind and publisher of the largest UK windsurfing title. Kasprowsich was looking to expand his publishing business. That was the point Tim mentions, when he attempted to barter for the cost of the title and the publisher (H&L, if my memory is correct) just went and sold it right out from under him to Kasprowsich. The story goes, from what I heard, Tim and Kasprowsich did meet up but got on like Jesus meeting HellBoy and the meeting was over in 20minutes leaving Kasprowsich with THE skateboard magazine of the era, with no team to produce it !!! Disaster! Of course, Stig and I were now into the third season of publishing Snowboard UK magazine. It was still difficult to make ends meet, we both still had to hold down 'proper jobs'. So when out of the blue Mark Kasprowsich calls us with an offer to edit and run RAD, the skate bible of bibles, based in a plush converted barn in Oxfordshire compared to a cold and damp room in a carpet factory in Kidderminster, AND get paid to do so, well, we were all over it. That phone call might well have happened the same day Tim walked away. Stig and I did have our reservation however about doing the roles before we accepted, we weren't sufficiently in the London skate scene, we were just a little too much on the grey periphery to fully be absorbed by the skate cognoscenti both in the UK and in the USA. Its a tight knit, peer approved community. Were we worthy? So what happened next... We got on with it. Sourcing advertising was difficult, getting imagery was difficult, because it was viewed that Tim had been kicked out of his own mag (apart from the fact he never actually owned it, but it was still 'his'), we were not really accepted as we were just snowboarders, which was piss to hardcore skaters back then. The plan was spend two weeks on RAD then two weeks on SUK, but slowly the print deadlines on RAD slipped and slipped as we could not get enough advertising, until we were trying to produce both mags in the same time frame and we just could not do it. We knew about the boys up in Nottingham, Andrew Horsley and Chris, producing their own mag (damn forgotten the name...SYSTM). They were properly 'in the scene' so we introduced them to Kasprowsich to take over RAD. It seemed to happen so quickly. Then it was us out on our ear, and we became persona non grata in the Oxfordshire barn. But we were allowed to stay there for the remainder of the production season. I will say, thankfully, Andy & Chris did a very much better job than we did at RAD and brought it back to life because they had the 'correct' connections and skater respect we did not have. Understandable. SUK however was beginning to get big, we were getting good ad sales and this did not go unnoticed by ArcWind. So, Kasprowsich being the guy he was, made the most of that opportunity presented before him and started his own snowboard magazine - Snowboard World. Yes, that's where it came from. When we found out we shifted SUK out of there that night and went back to our beloved carpet factory in Kidderminster. Chod Thomas was the Snowboard World editor and Jim Peskett, the ad manager for Windsurf, took on the new role of ad manager for Snowboard World. That mag lasted for 3 or was it 4 issues before everyone, and when I say everyone I mean everyone, realised what a cock the publisher was. Chod and Jim and Andy and Chris left en-mass, like a coup, and created a new publishing company, the titles being Whitelines snowboard magazine and Sidewalk Surfer skate mag. And that moment was the death of RAD. And the rest, as they say, is history.

So, what I'm trying to point out here, is that moment, that singular point in our continuum, where Tim decides not to carry on with RAD, in fact spawned a whole new horizon of action sports titles. Ponder on that one for a while...

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dwardjspring · 7 years ago

Video

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dwardjspring · 7 years ago

Link

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dwardjspring · 7 years ago

Audio

When I get this project off the ground it will change a lot of things. Very exciting for me.

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dwardjspring · 8 years ago

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Trust is the opposite of Worry

Mr C Pelle.

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dwardjspring · 8 years ago

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Eddie Spearing for QLDC Councillor 2017

Strategy & Infrastructure

Just lately, I've been bumping into audio and video talking about ‘the future’. The future has become an ever decreasing time frame on our part don’t you think? And within that diminishing time frame many issues have to be 'solved'. Which of course, with our ever decreasing focus, these shorter time frames move us to wanting more immediate fulfillment, so much so, we forget where we are at.

Wanaka, to me, does not seem as busy as we are making out. We have moments around New Year etc., but have you been to Queenstown lately? That’s busy. Every restaurant packed every day of the week, even past 8pm LOL! And the traffic is congested, no doubt. So we have a long way to go before that level of busy. But of course, given time, Wanaka could be that busy.

Our planet's biggest issue is food production. We are currently using about half the planet for making food. All the planet's remaining diverse animal life has to live on the other half. So we are about on the limit of spreading out and using more and more land to make food. We need to make food another way. You could say, ’depopulate’. Outside of world war (possible) and viral zombie pestilence (CIA conspiracy), predictions state we will be at 9.5 billion global population by 2050 and there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s statistics. It’s reality. That’s only 30 or so years away. However, that timeframe will allow us to increase food production using our existing land, if we are clever, and in the same time frame, back away from increased carbon levels and the higher consequent global temperatures predicted. All by 2050. But it will take 30 years for the issues of overpopulation - really, the root of all the challenges, to even come to terms with, both ethically and practically, before a slowing and reverse after 2050. So we as a planet need to think about that now. In 2020. That's pretty incredible isn’t it? How our actions, now, affect our lives in the future. A human existential problem only 30 years away! I remember 1987 as if yesterday.

We need to look past our twenty, even thirty year cycles. We should be thinking in lifetimes. Multiple lifetimes. Ours, our successors, and their successors. That’s the underpinning to sustainability.

So how does that relate to lil’ ol’ Wanaka? In 2002 at the start of the 2020 process (which has been superseded and replaced by Shaping Our Future), in 2006 there was an estimation the Wanaka and surrounds would be at 11,500 population by 2026. We are at that already, roughly ten years early. We seem to be ‘needing’ development, and as a consequence, infrastructure and its strategy follows, not the other way around. What’s driving that? I’d like to know your thoughts there. And yes, it’s a Catch-22 because we also planned for diverse industries and jobs and people and that requires growth. Maybe the urgency for growth is what’s wrong. One of the themes of Wanaka 2020 was the Wanaka township should stay between the two rivers - Cardrona river and the Lake Wanaka Clutha outlet. I believe we need to keep to that and stop sprawl. That was the plan.

We may well need new roads. Where will they go to satisfy the growth we are on the verge of? How will the future populations of the Northlake and Hikuwai developments move freely to the lakefront or Three Parks (the future town centre) without more roads to ease congestion when all the houses are built? How long will that be? How ever did that happen? Maybe a new road from the outlet campground on the paper road to Penrith Park Road. That would be nice wouldn’t it?

Have you seen the Wanaka Lakefront plan? It’s awesome. Community Board member Quentin Smith posted it on his page the other day. It’s not due to be completed until 2022, so a five year roll out. It will form a stronger link between Pembroke Park and the lake. It will claim back the entire lakefront from vehicles and parking and make the whole front of the lake a joy. No parking is lost, just moved slightly, not far, just a bit of an extra walk. But it’s really good (well, I think it’s really good).

So it goes like this… we already have a plan - Shaping Our Future. Maybe we could take it out a bit further - a dream almost. We look at that long term vision, we back-cast at points in time, check progress along the pathway, and adapt slightly as required (you know, disruptive electric self driving cars become ubiquitous by 2025, and we weren't prepared for that), but we stick to the overall plan and vision, the place we want to be, and provide for its implementation. But we don’t get sidelined, we don’t make exceptions, we don’t get cornered or steam rollered. We don’t capitulate to plan changes to ‘save ratepayers money’ in court. That is the price we may need to pay to stick to the long long long term plan.

Watch this video (15mins): https://www.ted.com/…/ari_wallach_3_ways_to_plan_for_the_ve…

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dwardjspring · 8 years ago

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Eddie Spearing for QLDC Councillor 2017

Affordable Housing

The ability to fix the affordable housing problem will never occur when currently an ‘affordable’ house in our district is $800,000 or more. That’s crazy. An affordable house ought to be about $450,000 or thereabouts. In days gone by the annual income to house price ratio was 3 to 5 times. Those days seem to be truly long long gone! Nationally the average house price is in the realm of 8X annual income. Around here it’s 15X !! Now, how on earth is that ever going to work?

It’s a very simple answer. It’s not.

The lack of affordable housing is a factor of a number of things.

Land and housing speculation. The best way to make a lot of money, quickly, is to do it with land and housing. If you can afford to... The outcome is ever escalating price as we are witnessing. There are corrections from time to time, but the underlying direction is a rapid up. Freeing up and developing more land will not fix the problem. The underlying issue is not a supply problem.

The problem cannot be fixed locally or regionally, (by that I mean the QLDC). It requires a national policy reset. That comes from a government policy we don’t currently even have, hence this is not going to get fixed soon. There are various countries with a housing policy which can be copied to create the mechanism to reset the source conditions at the root of our current problem. Germany is but one. In addition - vacant houses need to be included in a policy somehow to help the rental situation, combined with an overseas buyer purchase tax as is already the case in Sydney & Vancouver where purchasers can only buy properties they live in. But these aren't my ideas, just stuff I read.

Surety of rental As real estate becomes ever more out of reach, the only other possibility is renting. But what is the reality of a rental situation? There is no security for the tenant. None. How many times have we heard friends having to move because the house owner is selling. The tenant has to be a part of the sale, with rental costs fixed, which will provide tenant security. Think about this point a while and you can see how it all becomes clear. It helps the whole affordable housing / speculation situation slow down… Again, Germany to name but one country, has very stringent tenancy laws to protect the tenant and in doing so secondarily acts as a control on house and land speculation.

My family lived in a rented house in the UK with fixed rent for 55 years. We never owned our family home, but we always felt it was ‘ours’. And that knowledge has been a deep rooted driver in providing a solid basis for building my family. Having such a constant in your life - a house to call home, is important for wellbeing.

How does the QLDC work within the current situation? a. Housing trusts. They exist and they work, allowing a small small number of select specific people to get on the ladder on a one off basis. But they are a patch on a crack. Not a solution. But they are good, they mean good and are proving successful in a very limited, numbers wise, way. (eg.qlcht.org.nz) b. High density housing can also be a localised solution, but we are talking small apartments in the current price climate to make truly ‘affordable’ housing work. I don’t believe any currently exist. Who should own them? Private or public? Who administers them? What are the rules of engagement? Again, a housing policy is required.

Now, to those of you who have discovered The Opportunities Party, the above will have come as no surprise as it's basically a rehash (with loads missing) of their prime tax policy, which is itself based on the 2001 Tax Review and 2010 Tax Working Group. I state now I am totally apolitical, but it’s the only realistic and logical explanation I have yet to read. In many ways it’s not an easy read, because there are some tough pills to swallow, but nonetheless it's a realistic, workable, but unfortunately long term (maybe 20 years) solution to fully implement.

I am limited on how much I can write and hence hold your attention, Hey, it’s social media - the attention span of a goldfish, but If you look deeper you will find answers.

So what am I saying? It’s this - I don’t have definitive answers and being a QLDC Councillor will not make any difference in creating immediate solutions in the short term. These are very deep seated issues. But what I can be is a voice for on-going change to try make a difference.

{ Wondering about the image? It’s the flag for Quarantine which is a 'state of enforced isolation' }

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