‘Huge waste’: Labor loses key supporters over inner-city housing plans

The Minns government has been criticised from all sides of the housing debate, including its usual supporters, over its plan for a prime piece of inner-city land that will be sold to developers for new homes.

Sydney YIMBY, which advocates for more housing, said it was a “huge waste” that the 1.2-hectare former WestConnex dive site on Parramatta Road in Annandale was slated to deliver just 100 private market dwellings and no social or affordable housing.

The former WestConnex dive site, on the border of Camperdown and Annandale, which the government will turn over for private housing.Credit: Peter Rae

The Property Council, an industry group which has backed Labor’s efforts to boost housing supply and density, also criticised the decision not to compel 30 per cent social and affordable housing on the Annandale site.

Its NSW executive director Katie Stevenson said: “If you can’t make it work [there], how do you make it work in other parts of our city where it’s even more difficult to develop right now?”

The government went to the election pledging all developments on government land would include at least 30 per cent social and affordable housing, but it now says this is a cumulative total – not a site-by-site requirement.

While Stevenson acknowledged commercial realities differed from site to site, she said the public now expected publicly owned sites to be redeveloped in a way that “supports those in need”, and altering that approach “creates a risk around that critically important social licence”.

NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson defended the arrangements, saying it was never Labor’s intent that every site would have to clear the 30 per cent threshold, which was not feasible.

“I never thought it was possible to do it on every single parcel of land. I don’t have a problem with that, I think that is completely sensible,” she said. “That was the whole point of the [land] audit; to look at it strategically and holistically.”

In North Eveleigh, near Carriageworks, Homes NSW will lead a redevelopment of the old Clothing Store sub-precinct where 50 per cent of the 500 new homes will be social or affordable. Another 40 sites will be progressively released following the audit.

Jackson said state-owned developer Landcom may yet take an interest in the land, which sits on the border of Camperdown and Annandale, and it could yield more than 100 units. “I think that is a conservative estimate. I would like to see more homes on that site,” she said, adding that planning work was in the early stages.

The old Clothing Store sub-precinct in North Eveleigh has been earmarked for new housing by the Minns government.Credit: Jessica Hromas

Sydney YIMBY argues the site, which is a stone’s throw from RPA Hospital, should be at least 20 storeys and have the 30 per cent rule applied. The group’s chair, Justin Simon, was agnostic about whether the rule should apply at all ex-government sites.

“When you undercook sites as badly as Camperdown has been, you reduce the total number of homes, and you get 30 per cent of a much smaller number,” he said.

Simon noted there was already a 16-storey building across the road. He said if the problem was that a taller building would take longer to approve, “the planning minister has a pen, he can sign off on these things”.

Committee for Sydney chief executive Eamon Waterford said it was the perfect site for affordable housing and innovation jobs. “To do neither is short-sighted and a bad outcome for Sydney’s long-term success,” he said.

The government has also been criticised over its affordable housing shift by political opponents including Liberal planning spokesman Scott Farlow and Balmain Greens MP Kobi Shetty, both of whom accused Labor of breaking an election promise.

Adam Haddow, president of the NSW chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects, said social and affordable housing at all government-owned sites was “not just a policy choice but a moral imperative”, and asked: “If not here, then where?”

However, others were more sanguine. Shelter NSW chief executive John Engeler said the bigger picture mattered most, and the government was clearly committed to applying the 30 per cent requirement cumulatively. “My only worry is I hope this doesn’t send the wrong message to the private sector,” he said.

Former Labor housing minister David Borger, who now chairs a lobby group Housing Now, said it was a difficult problem. “We can be more ambitious to achieve affordable housing on government-owned sites,” he said. “But we’ve got to understand that there can be significant constraints. There also has to be feasibility around all these projects.”

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