Why you should support more apartments being built across the Illawarra

Phillip Balding writes in the Illawara Mercury

I January, 2025

Housing prices can be as low as it costs to produce, or as high as people are able or willing to pay. Where do you think we currently sit on this scale?

I want to see an Illawarra with bustling pubs, Electric Vehicles, more people starting families, working less but holidaying more, retiring early, shorter commutes and 10 minute train and bus options. But we will never achieve any of this without cheaper housing.

We do this by massively increasing housing supply where people want to live - that’s wherever housing is expensive.

Yes, the expensive locations. Conventional wisdom here needs to flip - building homes where people do not want to live like West Dapto and Wilton means a forever slow trickle of housing while we wait for wealthier people to be pushed out to these places - these are the people that afford new housing, typically a few hundred thousand more than older stock. But how will this happen efficiently when it’s the poorest who are pushed out of their own communities due to affordability?

My determination to see housing densification started in my teenage years, waiting years for a bus or a train. We will never get city-tier services without city-tier housing density, being like Broken Hill but expecting Melbourne will forever frustrate us.

I’m infuriated by these walkable and transit locations wasted on large homes, these are great housing types for the suburbs on the fringe. Sometimes to protect the beautiful view lines to the escarpment, but radically applied to every square cm of the Illawarra.

We are force-fed these views as if it’s our 24/7 pacifier at extreme cost to our local economy and functioning of the region. We have 2100km of vastly undeveloped NSW coastline to appreciate a village lifestyle.

The Illawarra should be a place for cheap living and economic opportunity. Consider this advice selfishly - do you expect millionaires to serve your coffee and teach your kids?

We don’t have a shortage of detached houses, we lack attractive well located apartments for downsizers, singles, couples without kids. Only 25% of households have young children while over two-thirds have yards. Yet ironically families can’t afford one - the solution is to free up these homes by permitting more apartments where people would live in them.

The Illawarra needs to face reality and permit higher density - by the beaches, stations and our transit corridors, town centres, both existing and new ones in Towradgi and Woonona East.

The NSW productivity commission tells us building homes where people want to live has the *greatest effect* on prices, minor effects on pricing come from things like tax concessions and construction costs. Australia’s expert Urban Economists publish a lot of research with strong consensus supporting this.

The demand is in some locations but not others - take for example a few 7 storey buildings in Fairy Meadow on Pioneer road.

We would really only need to build a handful like this per year to meet demand, more if it must be shorter. A 3 bedder for sale is $1.6m, well in excess of construction costs, this is very important for getting more housing.

We could wait for interest rates and cement prices to come down to be able to build in other less desirable suburbs, or just permit more in Fairy Meadow (wherever it doesn’t flood) right now?

Just down the street we see new duplexes pop up, like most suburbs that’s all Council permits. It’s near the free bus, a pub, and the beach. An apartment is not for everyone, yet indirectly the new occupants free up houses for Aussie Dreamers, making them cheaper. 

Apartment Allies should include the folks further out like the 14,000 commuters from Shellharbour stuck in traffic, some might like to live closer to work. Or those looking at forking out $500k for a lot in West Dapto, they might like to see that come down in line with other regions where lots are $200k thanks to responsible Councils with a timely response to housing demand.

People pay a premium for scarce rights to build here, not land, because it magically fetches over 20 times the price when it’s rezoned from agricultural to residential.

Apartments benefit everyone because it’s more housing. Tell your local Councillor to push for a bit of magic paperwork to subdue housing prices by hundreds of thousands of dollars over the coming decades while wages catch up. We should rezone the Illawarra to permit more homebuilding where people want to live.