Compiling the best reading of the week from your friendly local website.

Arthur Grimes: How to fix a broken Auckland? Add 150,000 homes to crash prices by 40%

“The question then is how can Auckland grow and at the same time have house prices that become affordable for more people. Logically, the only answer to that conundrum is that the city needs a massive increase in the number of dwellings.

Every time I hear a politician talk about wanting affordable housing, I ask them how much they wish house prices to collapse by. I have yet to receive an answer.”

Aimie Cronin: A Crisis head South: The new homeless of Hamilton

Carina Renata is a small woman who is 43 years old. She has five kids. She dresses tidily in a cheap black suit and she speaks only after having thought hard about it first. The need for her to find a place to live affects her so much that the pain looks physical… As she waits for a house to become available, there have been nights where she has slept in her 2002 Honda van with the three youngest children, aged 10, 12 and 14.

Hayden Donnell: Holy shit, we found the worst 10 minutes of radio

“It’s called ‘Controversy Corner’, though it could equally be named ‘I’m Not Racist But…’, ‘Look, I Have Gay Friends’, or ‘Women Are Just Wired Differently’. It’s certifiably terrible, but it’s also worth listening to, if only as a whistlestop tour through the ugliest parts of New Zealand’s sickly sports media culture.”

Paul Gallagher: Brexit through the gift shop: An open letter to NZ leave voter Alex Hazlehurst

“Politics is by no means an exact science, and no one holds all of the answers. Good on you for exercising your democratic right when plenty of others did not. But despite the strength of your political conviction, your two-year visa brings up a pertinent point: you are here for a good time, not a long time.”

Tara Ward: Wine for breakfast: A real housewife spends a day living like the Real Housewives

“She stares at me, dumbfounded. I encourage her to throw a glass of water in my face, Real Housewives style, but she refuses. Hold the flaming botox – is my Real Housewife crusade actually creating a state of domestic harmony?”

Ra Pomare: ‘Te Reo Ākina with Ra Pomare’ – Day Two: Māori Language Week 2016

Funded by Te Māngai Pāho and produced by instagram legend Ra Pomare, learn a Māori phrase every day this week with these helpful videos, depicting real life conversations between ordinary hard-working kiwis.

Ben Stanley: There’s another 7-foot Kiwi basketball player getting NBA buzz

Calipari was impressed with Wynyard from the moment he saw him: ‘you have a player with size that has a bounciness to him.’

‘He’s physically tough, and is young,’ he says.”

Madeline Holden: ‘I just wanted to be heard’: why survivors are outing their abusers online

“For those who go through the legal system, the adversarial court process can be deeply re-traumatising: their sexual histories may be raked over, their characters called into question and their accounts scrutinised for inconsistencies and contributory blame. Victims often report feeling like they are the ones who are on trial.”

Ryan Mearns: Sorry Simon Bridges, people really want rail included in the second Auckland harbour crossing

“The results indicate that if there is $7 billion in the transport budget over the next 30 years, which I doubt, then the public would overwhelmingly support an option that was both road and rail. When we dug a little deeper we found some interesting insights though.”

Jessica Hansell: Build a bridge and get over it: Jessica Hansell on why making a cartoon is both hard and magical

“When we started Aroha Bridge it was about making a work specific to the Aotearoa that we actually knew. Smart but suffering, broke but ever-optimistic, multicultural and tense. Someone asked who the typical viewer was yesterday and I realised: it was for people who didn’t win a KFC giveaway beanie but will never give up the dream.”

Grant Bayldon: Justifying a meagre refugee quota because of the homeless problem is a terrible, terrible argument

“Trawl back through the prime minister’s media interviews on refugees and you’ll hear a lot of subtle messaging about local housing shortages. On the face of it, that’s fair enough. After all, refugees need housing, and we already have homelessness.

But dig a little deeper and the foundations of this messaging start to look decidedly rotten.”