The NSW Government has just released 5-year housing completion targets to help address the chronic shortage of housing we are facing.
The goal is to build 377,000 new homes by increasing density in existing suburbs.
The governments plan is to do so by incentivising local councils or LGA’s in four ways:
- Rezoning areas close to transport reducing minimum lot size for subdivisions and increasing density limits
- Setting specific housing targets on an council by council basis
- Allocating $200M to ‘reward’ councils for adding houses- to be spent on local infrastructure
- Creating a $1.6B accelerated infrastructure fund which fast tracks council applications for grants to upgrade sports fields, bike paths, roads, etc.
How dense will your suburb get?
The table below provides a snapshot for some key Sydney councils.
The discrepancy in housing targets across the suburbs is… interesting.
We can only imagine the targets are a result of how dense each LGA already is, what the existing access to transport is like and how hard the LGA has lobbied to resist density.
Note these are targets only, and minister Chris Minns admits the numbers are aspirational.
I’d also question the $200M to be used to incentivise councils, which works out to around $500 per home approved and built. Not exactly a life changing sum of money for a council.
Finally there’s the issue of how the land will come into developers hands.
Sydney’s housing shortage and ever increasing prices stem in part from folks not wanting to sell because they have nowhere else to go.
More builders and developers looking to acquire sites increases competition for regular home buyers and pushes up prices, so supply and affordability may get worse before it gets better.
A new Sydney is coming. A bigger Sydney, and hopefully a better Sydney.
If only we can build the right typologies, and mixes of housing, where they are needed, built to a quality standard, and ultimately available to our citizens at an accessible price.
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