Fight against Sydney tower shows tension over new housing targets
Plans for a mid-rise apartment block in an affluent suburb have laid bare a truth many Aussies don’t want to hear.
Opposition to plans for mid-rise apartment towers in an affluent Sydney suburb has again shown the disparity between new housing targets and locals who don’t want them.
Residents in the city’s lower north shore have railed against a senior living development topping out at seven storeys on Parraween St in Cremorne.
The project, proposed to include 58 apartments and a 41-bed residential care facility across four buildings, was ticked off by the Department of Planning and the state’s heritage agency.
However, it must now go to the NSW Independent Planning Commission (IPC) after the North Sydney Council and more than 50 members of the public lodged objections.
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Complaints have included that the project’s “excessive” scale would impact property values and that roads would be clogged by an “overpopulation”
In its submission, the council noted,“Strong concerns are raised that the proposed State Significant Development Application, if approved, will result in a loss of, or unacceptable impact to, a number of late Victorian cottages and Federation dwellings that have been identified as having Heritage value by Council”.
“The proposal is of a scale and form that is out of character with the current and desired future character of the area and will likely result in unacceptable amenity impacts,” it said.
But such developments might start popping up around Australia’s major cities under plans to overhaul planning laws and boost supply.
Treated as ‘the enemy’
Analysis of housing approval data shows North Sydney is among the slowest councils in the state for approving housing projects.
It has been set a target of 1180 homes a year until 2029 under recent NSW government reforms to address the housing crisis, but has been approving at a rate of just 68.
North Sydney Council also recently opposed plans for 200 apartments in a 22-storey tower at Crows Nest, which also has the support of state planners. It too will go before the IPC.
Justin Simon from the housing advocacy group YIMBY blocking such projects could lead to a point where “there is going to be no young families, no essential workers and no grandchildren living in that vicinity”.
Mr Simon said opposing these kinds of projects, ironically, could also force locals out of their own suburbs when the time came to downsize or seek assisted living.
“And they’re potentially going to turn around and realise there’s nowhere in their suburb they can do that,” he said.
But Michael Buxton, a senior planning expert at RMIT University, has sympathy for so-called NIMBYS and called the label a “derogatory term for people generally who have the public interest at heart”.
He said those opposing the changing character of their suburbs should not be “damned as selfish” and took a swipe at “autocratic” planning controls being imposed in Sydney and Melbourne.
“There are better ways to meet housing demand and to ensure that sufficient planning provides it, and the accepted way is for governments to work with residents, not to typecast them as the enemy,” Mr Buxton said.
‘Radical wrecking’
Both the NSW and Victorian governments are pursuing versions of housing reform in the state capitals, identifying zones where greater density will be encouraged to deliver tens of thousands of new homes.
NSW has the Transport Oriented Development program while Victoria has its “activity centres” project, the latter of which Mr Buxton has lashed as a threat to Melbourne’s soul.
He has said rezoning to allow high-rise towers of 10 storeys or more near transport sites across Melbourne could lead to it becoming a “fourth-rate city”.
“What the Victorian government’s doing is introducing an unprecedented, radical wrecking of accepted planning systems and accepted planning procedures … (and) wanting to pull down most of an established city.”
Victoria’s Planning Minister Sonya Kilkenny has previously described Mr Buxton’s criticism of the government’s plans as “completely wrong”.
However, there has been significant pushback in the community, particularly in 50 affluent suburbs where the Allan government has pledged to overhaul planning rules so “locked out” young people could move in.
“The status quo won’t cut it. There is only one way out of the housing crisis — build our way out,” Premier Jacinta Allan said last month.
Mr Buxton says NSW has taken a similar approach to Victoria in imposing planning controls but says the Minns government has found a better balance in preserving heritage and encouraging different types of dwellings.
Lag in apartments
Housing Industry Australia’s (HIA) executive director for planning, Mike Hermon, said medium or “gentle density” developments were a “crucial piece” of the housing puzzle.
The HIA released a report on Wednesday highlighting the “missing middle” of Australia’s housing stock, which has contributed to the country reaching a “tipping point”.
It found in the year ending June 2024 there were less than 30,000 apartments approved across the country – the least since 2009 and just 18 per cent of all new planned dwellings.
Meanwhile, around three times as many detached houses were given the green light in the same period.
“Currently to obtain approval for all forms of housing is taking far too long and exacerbating the current housing crisis,” Mr Hermon said.
A ‘ridiculous situation’
The NSW government hopes to unlock 112,000 new homes by 2029 through reforms such as rezoning land close to public transport and job hubs to up density across the city.
NSW Planning Minister Paul Scully on Thursday echoed the HIA’s message in a speech to parliament, saying restrictions on the types of housing being built had left Sydney in a “ridiculous situation”.
He said townhouses, terraces, duplexes, and small apartment buildings had “played a big part in NSW’s housing supply since Sydney was built”.
But, he said, “over the last few decades, these types of homes have been slowly disappearing
from lots of local areas because of council restrictions”.
“In fact, if you wanted to build an iconic Sydney terrace there were only two council
areas in all of Sydney that would have allowed it,” Mr Scully said.
“It was a ridiculous situation.
“It’s any wonder we have a challenge with housing availability when councils weren’t
allowing people to build many of the housing types that NSW was built on.”
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