Housing affordability is becoming an issue in many parts of the country.

Auckland house prices will double again by late-2020, if they continue to rise at their current rate. The median price will be almost $2m.

That's only four and a half years away, at the end of the next parliamentary term; and this is more than a Jafa issue. Hamilton, Tauranga and other neighbours are starting to feel the heat.

Yet politicians in Wellington and Auckland continue to fiddle. A minor tax tweak here and an RMA twiddle there, all glossed over with unfulfilled promises of more affordable housing.

Rod Oram believes housing relief may take many years even if Government acts to help hard-pressed buyers and stabilise the market.

Such ineffective, fragmented responses are doomed to failure. Housing's supply and demand issues are far too complex and intense for such irresponsible inactivity. Only deep, long and co-ordinated policies will fundamentally shift market forces.

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Government, council, realtors and builders know that. Problems and solutions have been laid bare in a series of reports in recent years, beginning with the Productivity Commission's work.

The best single-source bringing this work together is the Housing Supply, Choice and Affordability report last September from Auckland Council. It is available at nz2050.com/AffordableAuckland.

Currently, the median house price in Auckland is 10 times the median income, a very high ratio by world standards. It was less that four times as recently as 2004.

What would it take to bring it back to five times by 2030, the report asks. It focuses its answers on five areas. The biggest gains would come from improved construction productivity and supply of cheaper attached dwellings, and better design rules for apartments.

The least gains would come from expanding Auckland beyond its current boundaries and from intensifying housing within the boundaries.

Yet the backlash against intensification by a small minority of people has blocked proposals and made councillors risk averse. The leadership council was offering, based on excellent research and policy proposals, has largely evaporated.

The election of a new mayor and council in October is no guarantee of renewed progress. Phil Goff and Vic Crone, the two leading mayoral candidates, are not yet credible on their analysis of the crisis and their proposed solutions; and the new council will have a sizable bloc of NIMBY councillors.

The tragedy is modest intensification can create delightful places to live and work, and a much more efficient and economically productive city, as we're starting to see in small pockets around town.

At least Auckland council knows what many of the best solutions are, even if it hasn't worked out how to sell them to voters. It has made some progress, though, shifting the government to more helpful policies on, for example, funding public transport and other essential investment.

However, radical change in the way we plan, build and finance Auckland's development is critical. Only then will we have a chance to make the city affordable and attractive, and wealth generating from productive activity rather than property speculation.

But we can't even get to first base by conceding this is an asset bubble. Plenty of people still argue the current house price to income ratio of 10 is sustainable, indeed some believe it could rise further.

But the economic and social damage is palpable even at this level. Worse, the idea prices could keep rising at the current rate, which is eight times faster than incomes, is insane.

Any slowdown in economic growth or rise in interest rates would ratchet up the pain on borrowers and lenders.

It is a worry how dependent banks have become on mortgage lending. Back in 1984 when we began liberalising the economy, their total assets were a mere $6.5 billion, of which 13.6 per cent were housing mortgages.

Today mortgages account for 51.9 per cent of their $407 b of assets. Add in their agricultural loans accounting for 15 per cent of their assets and the two most stressed sectors in the economy account for two-thirds of their assets.

Meanwhile banks' loans to manufacturers have shrivelled to 2.8 per cent of their assets from 24.5 per cent.

Even if National and Labour promise radical new policies on housing in next year's election, and manage to deliver some progress by 2020, housing relief will take much longer. Whichever party's in power will suffer the rising wrath of voters.