This week’s Victorian Housing Statement highlights the scale of the challenge every state and territory Government faces to meet their National Housing Accord targets. Just like in Victoria, the NSW Government has a short window of opportunity to deliver a comprehensive suite of policy initiatives that must start delivering change on the ground from next year if we are going to deliver 378,000 new homes in NSW by 2029.
There is no silver bullet. Every single policy must have an impact, we have no time to wait and no room for failure. It takes years for housing to be delivered from the time approvals are granted. This means that NSW needs to build 76,000 new homes every year to meet our Accord target – more than we have ever built before.
As our analysis shows in the tables below, we need to outperform in all types of housing – apartments, detached houses and medium density – and across the length and breadth of NSW. The scale of this housing crisis means they will need to pull on many more levers to kickstart the sector at the scale needed to meet the record-breaking number of new houses needed year-on-year to meet our targets.
Source Oxford Economics and UDIA NSW
The Victorian Statement reinforces the challenges NSW is facing with a housing crisis driven by a lack of supply and worsening affordability and the important role the private sector will have in financing and building around 95% of these new homes. It makes it clear that success will require state Government’s and the development sector working together to deliver great place outcomes which include transport infrastructure, schools, hospitals, community amenities and roads, alongside housing.
In NSW, the Government has announced a number of important policies that will help build momentum for new housing and is currently exploring how creating Transit Oriented Development can help address the housing crisis. We agree.
Every new train station built should include high-density living, affordable housing for key workers and deliver great place outcomes. This recipe should be repeated across the existing Sydney train network to achieve more walkable Cities within Cities and delivering on the broader cost of living and sustainability challenges.
The Government’s proposed Affordable Housing Bonus announced by the Premier in June is another policy that is encouraging and one which UDIA NSW has been advocating for over many months. For the affordable housing bonus to actually deliver at genuine scale, developers must access the full 30% height increase to deliver 15% affordable housing as leasehold over 15 years. This may mean some projects exceed existing local planning controls but this is a necessary trade-off to deliver new affordable homes. These impacts can be properly managed to balance the need for affordable housing while introducing more flexible standards. Our analysis shows this approach could double the potential number of affordable homes that could be delivered, potentially above 10,000 in the Accord period.
There is also a further opportunity to leverage the Federal Government’s Housing Australia Future Fund to bring these affordable rental homes into the ownership of the community housing sector in perpetuity, rather than giving them a 15-year term as is currently being proposed.
While UDIA is pleased that the NSW Government is committed to working constructively with the development sector, there is no time to wait and we are keen to see a comprehensive and coordinated policy response in the coming months.
This will enable our industry to deliver the housing the people of NSW urgently need.
–ends–
Media Enquiries: Deanna Lane 0416 295 898 dlane@udiansw.com.au