Byron housing plan to triple size of coastal village

A sleepy coastal village near Byron Bay will almost triple in size over the next 20 years under a council plan to solve the region’s housing crisis.

The state government wants Byron Shire to come up with 4522 new homes by 2041 – a 25 per cent increase in its housing stock – and the council has honed in on Brunswick Heads as the answer, saying the village and surrounding rural area could host another 1990 properties over the next 20 years, on top of the 1125 dwellings that are already there.

Housing in the Brunswick Heads area is set to triple in size in the next 20 years, under a council proposal.

In particular, it has identified for investigation about 130 hectares of elevated agricultural land southwest of Brunswick Heads, known as Saddle Ridge, which boasts million-dollar views from Cape Byron to Mount Warning and is home to a couple of dozen lifestyle and farming properties.

Saddle Ridge is deemed “regionally significant farmland”, which makes it more difficult to develop, but in a new housing options paper, the council says rezoning the land for residential use would allow for another 1500 medium-density homes to be built there. The Northern Rivers Reconstruction Corporation also identified part of the ridge site for future housing in its draft Resilient Lands Strategy.

Some residents fear putting so many houses on the landscape will destroy its character and pose a risk to the environment and the indigenous heritage of the ridgeline, which they say is an ancient travelling route for people moving between the hinterland and the sea.

“When you start driving up the road, you already know you want to be there,” resident Rosy Whelan said. “It’s the kind of place that worms its way into your soul, and you don’t want to leave.”

Whelan is the secretary of a ridge residents group that successfully opposed a previous application to rezone the land for residential use, made by some ridge landowners in 2016. She said the ridge was home to native fauna and flora, including koalas and remnants of the Big Scrub Rainforest that should be protected.

“There’s a lot at stake here but try and talk about it and you’re just a NIMBY,” she said.

“It isn’t that we’re opposed to development, not at all. We think there’s a fantastic opportunity here on Saddle Ridge to incorporate all the good things ... that should be preserved, as well as sustainable development of housing, and also agriculture.”

Properties on The Saddle Road enjoy views stretching from Cape Byron to Mount Warning.

The Brunswick Heads Progress Association is pushing for the coastal village to be listed as a heritage conservation area before any predicted surge in population or reduction in minimum lot sizes.

“It would help us protect the character of the original village when we get the onslaught,” president Leone Bolt said. “It feels like the 1960s and we’ve got it intact. It’s really a special place.”

The northern edge of Mullumbimby is also slated for development in the council’s housing options paper, with new land release expected to provide most of the 1632 new homes flagged for the hinterland town.

Byron Shire Mayor Michael Lyon said the broader Byron community supported the council’s efforts to find housing across the shire, given COVID sea-changers and the 2022 floods had put huge pressure on an already tight market and forced many locals to move out.

“So many people have lost friends or family members, their kids’ friends at school. So many businesses have been struggling to find staff. I don’t think it’s going to be hard to sell,” Lyon said.

Byron Mayor Michael Lyon says the community supports finding more housing in the shire.Credit: Danielle Smith

“The broader Mullumbimby area, towards Bruns [Brunswick Heads], is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the new release.

“The farmland [on Saddle Ridge] is not particularly good – I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s regionally significant – and given how much regionally significant farmland we have got in the shire that isn’t being farmed and will never be farmed again, we have been pushing for some time to get that mapping relaxed so we can actually build the housing we need.”

NSW Farmers has opposed changes to the mapping of important farmland, pointing out the need to protect agricultural land for the nation’s food security.

House prices in the Byron Shire almost doubled between 2020 and 2022, from a median price of $930,000 to $1.8 million, before falling back to $1.42 million this year. The shire also has the highest rate of rental stress in the state with a current vacancy rate of less than 1 per cent.

Last month, the state government agreed to a 60-day cap on short-term holiday rentals in most of Byron Shire, a key element of the council’s strategy to improve housing supply, but the Department of Planning only approved the cap after the council showed what else it was going to do to address housing shortages.

Lyon said the council had limited development options because much of the shire was flood-prone or “regionally significant farmland”, which can only be developed if such a move is supported by the strategic planning process, overseen by the Department of Planning and Environment.

He said the council had revised its 20-year residential strategy so that it would now exceed the state government’s target and provide 6995 houses in the next 20 years through new release and greater density in existing urban areas.

The housing options paper, which will inform the strategy, says Brunswick Heads could take 30 per cent of the new homes, largely on new land releases, while Mullumbimby could take 24.5 per cent. Byron Bay could absorb 18.5 per cent of the target and Bangalow 13.5 per cent.

The Department of Planning has been working with the council on its residential strategy since 2021, amid concerns its original submission did not go far enough to meet the target of 4522 new houses.

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