State Planning Changes

Phill Balding speaks in favour of State Planning Changes at Wollongong Council

I am Phill and I’ve started Greater Gong and Haven, we have about 20 folks now who will put in submissions supporting more housing in Development and Planning Applications, to counter local opposition. Our shortage is shown by a 1.5% rental vacancy rate, the 2nd worst in the state, the evidence is clear we need to build more homes to ease prices.

I support the states planning changes to push denser housing proximal to town centres and train stations, because more housing eases prices according to the research, and it is unacceptable for housing to be un-affordable in the Illawarra. I reject many of the council’s recommendations to submit objection to the state for these very modest, sensible and appropriate changes to our planning system, we should permit ordinary landowners here participate in a housing supply response. It is disingenuous to smothering our town and train with inappropriate low density zoning to block housing, wasting valuable proximal and expensive land, we must now finally deal with because of the housing crisis.

I reject the premise that planning restrictions are not the constraint on building more homes. We have a shortage of approvals, and with a consistent 70-80% completion rate we probably need to relax our planning rules to double our approvals to hit our targets. Read the reports from the productivity commission, RBA, think tanks like Grattan, Deloitte, Centre for independent studies that all regurgitate well established academic research - planning restrictions cause shortages where people want to live, people are pushed away to outbid others in neighbouring suburbs, pushing up prices for all. So any and all new housing eases prices, even expensive housing, as the new resident vacates their older home for someone less wealthy. Economists call this The Filtering Effect - The Filtering Effect is an important reason to permit more housing where people want to live.

The strong demand for apartments is clear. In the past 2 years we have seen rents rise from $380pw to $480 for 2 bed apartments. They sell for $800k when it costs nearly $500k to construct including GST and fees. It’s about $300k more than the marginal cost to produce them, or an enormous 60% gross profit margin on land they already own. Why aren’t the owners of the big houses next to Towradgi station building 8 apartments? They would make a huge profit. The answer is it is illegal due to planning restrictions. Their neighbours could build too, and so on until no one bothers anymore because the profit margin has shrunk too low. Competition works to reduce prices - this is how our market economies work if we permit it.

Theres no shortage of sky for apartments, just rights to build up. We continue to rudely force hard working Australian households pay unbelievable costs, lets foster a supply response to housing with the states changes. Many people I talk to prefer affordability over town character, those opposing an increase in density are nosy, and I strongly reject their poor values, they have 2100km of NSW coast to pick a dainty low-density town. This is a city. Let’s permit people  live how they want to live, there’s nothing wrong with a harmless taller building, put people before character.

It is inappropriate that we surround our high amenity town centres and stations with low density R2 after about 50m, units should be permitted to a walkable distance of 800m of places people actually go, just as the state gov are trying to enforce. You chose to smother well-located places with R2. The planners at this council are out of touch with affordability - they happily accept that a Towradgi house next to the station, preserved in R2 zoning just sold for $1.4m or an unbelievable 18x local median household salary. Why would we preserve this unaffordable low density? Do you expect to be served coffee by millionaire local employees? We should have the TODs policy expanded to all stations.

Corrimal is appropriately on the TOD list, it has grown its population by 12% to 7,000 people since 2001. Yet 0-4 year old children have swung the other way, falling by 9% to 362. 5-9 year olds are 3% less too. Thats about 30 less young families less than 2001 (but it should have grown higher), and this dangerous trend will accelerate toward a demographic dystopia as we have seen 2 bed apartment prices rise 28% lately. 18-24 year olds have also fallen 5% in Corrimal - the high school had a handful of graduates last year, I’m told roughly 30 students. All the growth of the area has been for retirees at the exclusion of others.

The alternative is sprawl to 10 suburbs south adding traffic, isolating people from their own communities and families. Your own housing strategy acknowledges there will be a change in character for more density, yet it remains totally illegal in most of the Illawarra, all we see is duplex applications outside the CBD. The council notes the targeted North Wollongong station doesn’t have shops - so why have you chosen 2 large alcohol warehouses there instead of shops and apartments? Just as bad is Bellambi’s well-located Bunnings. The west side of North Gong is full of expensive detached houses, it is the perfect location for permitting apartment buildings there - preserving this is terrible policy. Put affordability before character.

I reject the premise that we are constrained by poor public transport options, it is our low population density that constrains our transport. I catch busses and trains around here from a nearby 4 storey apartment building and am car free, the train frequency will never improve for low density housing. TfNSW respond to demand, they have a huge $8.6b budget for capital works. So over the next 20 years as we accept 50k people we proportionally expect about $4b for us. And yet quadrupling our train services from Thirroul to Dapto would only cost maybe $200m for 6 or so trains if we add the population.

I ask kindly of the councilors here to not accept these recommendations and let the state get on with the job of permitting more much needed housing.

Councillors - you won’t lose your job by permitting medium density apartment buildings around town centres, just ignore the handful of angry emails from nosy people that don’t care about affordability. However, you will lose your job by infuriating young people that want to afford to live near work, train, and in their own communities.