The much-promoted affordable housing centrepiece of the Minns Government’s density push has failed before it starts. A reality check is coming for the NSW Government. Michael Pascoe reports.
It’s a busy time for politicians trying to do something about housing affordability – or at least to be seen to be trying to do something. While Federal Labor is battling the opportunistic Greens-LNP coalition in the Senate over Help-to-Buy and build-to-rent schemes, the actual Coalition is sponsoring yet another Senate inquiry destined to achieve as much as all the other parliamentary housing inquiries – nada.
One of the first actions of the NSW Labor Government upon election 17 months ago was to announce it was scrapping the Greater Cities Commission (GCC), the independent body that attempted to instill some quality in urban planning. The big developers’ lobby, Urban Taskforce, wanted the GCC killed, so killed it was.
The developer lobby and its shills have long run the furphy that the housing crisis was all the fault of pernickety planners and councils, that all would be rosy in the shelter business if governments and councils just got out of the way and let the market rip.
Never mind that our crisis was created by letting the market rip with landlord-centric tax policies and governments deserting social housing and direct development responsibilities.
A bit of a TODdle
With developers having the government’s ear, the grand Minns plan for solving Sydney’s critical unaffordability is indeed to let the market rip with blanket planning permission for higher high rise around transport hubs – the quaintly named TOD (transport-oriented development) program.
Allowing greater density around existing infrastructure, encouraging it even, makes sense – if it is done well and not left to developers’ discretion.
Given the already inflated cost of land and developers’ primary interest in building expensive housing, the sweetener for any remaining Labor faithful was the promise that the higher density hubs would include “up to” 15 per cent “affordable housing.”
Anyone who has ever entered a dodgy shop advertising “up to 50 per cent off!” knows what tends to happen next.
And so it has been demonstrated before a single TOD has toddled into being. Behind the Sydney Morning Herald’s paywall over the weekend, Andrew Taylor blew the whistle ($) on the government’s triumph of spin over substance.
“Planning Department data shows as little as 3 per cent of new dwellings in Bankstown, in the city’s south-west, and Kellyville and Bella Vista, in the north-west, must be affordable housing,” the SMH reported.
“Homebush and Hornsby (both 5 per cent), Crows Nest (10 per cent) and Macquarie Park (10 per cent) will also have significantly less affordable housing under the lower end of the range proposed by the government.”
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Developers rule
Why? Simple – the developers complained that 15 per cent targets were too high, leaving many sites unfeasible. There’s a good chance even the 10 per cent targets will end up being watered down.
This is no surprise for the professionals not in the pay of developers or the NSW government. Mobs such as the Urban Design Association saw the Law of Unintended Consequences working hard on the developers/Minns’ plan from the start.
The ‘up to 15 per cent’ claim was merely the usual fig leaf spin to try to overcome some of the NIMBY backlash.
And this is only the rather vague “affordable” housing, not the much harder topic of public housing that governments around the country have been walking away from over the past three decades and more.
The spin attraction of “affordable housing for essential workers” was demonstrated by Premier Minns’ announcement of a $450 million build-to-rent workers on the Sunday before the state budget.
The Premier’s PR people trotted out some paramedics for the media to advertise the 400 homes that would be rented at a discount to the likes of teachers, nurses and firefighters.
Hey, everybody loves the ambos and fireys and nurses and teachers, those brave and generous essential workers – so let’s overlook the fact that 400 homes over three years is a pinch of salt in the Pacific Ocean.
What the spin and photo-op overlooked – and hoped everyone else did, too – is that bus drivers are also essential workers. So are the people who deliver food to supermarkets and stack the shelves. And the carers in aged and childcare centres. And the people who take away our garbage and keep our streets clean. And the road maintenance folk working through the night to fix (and sometimes create) transport mayhem.
In fact, beyond the entertainment, sports and marketing industries, just about everyone is an “essential worker” if our society is to continue to function. And even the jugglers, clowns, singers, footy players and advertising types are necessary for the sort of city and country we want to live in.
Thus, the token “affordable housing” sweetener for a select few of the more marketable occupations is a crock. It’s a distraction. It’s bullshit.
The reality remains that, the housing horse having bolted, only much braver, direct government development has a hope of denting the monster “the market” and neoliberal policies created.
But that would be hard – and the development lobby doesn’t want it.
The housing crisis we didn’t have to have, and how to fix it
Michael is a journalist, commentator, speaker and contributing editor for The New Daily.