Almost half of NSW voters back the Labor government’s push to dramatically boost housing supply through apartment living amid a new warning from Premier Chris Minns that NSW is building too few homes compared to other states.
Minns said on Sunday the “need is urgent” to increase housing supply as NSW faces being at least 130,000 homes short over the next five years, based on population projections which do not include an increase in international students or skilled migrants.
He also warned that NSW was failing to meet demand compared to other states.
“I saw some statistics from the Productivity Commission that indicates that over a 12-month period, NSW produces about five houses per 1000 people. Brisbane and Melbourne are both doing six and seven on the same metric. So we’re falling behind by any measure,” Minns said.
In a significant policy shift in managing population growth, one of Minns’ major announcements after coming to government in March was to declare that Sydney must “build up, not out”.
A new exclusive survey from Resolve Strategic for The Sydney Morning Herald found that 48 per cent of voters back Minns’ policy to increase supply through more apartments in city suburbs.
One-quarter of voters are undecided about the government’s push but 27 per cent of voters oppose the idea of building up, not out. The most opposition comes from Coalition voters.
Minns announced on Sunday that the government would fast-track critical infrastructure for rapidly growing communities in greater Sydney and the Central Coast, where 18,000 homes will be built in the next three years.
“I do think we can accommodate more people in NSW,” Minns said.
“[But] we need to make sure that we’ve got balanced growth, more apartments and towers closer to where there are jobs and opportunity and existing public transport infrastructure.”
As part of the government’s major rethink of housing policy, residential projects would be deemed state-significant developments if they have a capital investment value of more than $75 million and 15 per cent of their gross floor area is social or affordable housing.
That would give the minister for planning or the Independent Planning Commission the power to approve or reject such proposals, bypassing local and regional planning panels.
Minns said the NSW did not control migration numbers, but it was incumbent on the state government to deliver enough housing supply to meet increasing population demands.
The premier warned that NSW would be “130,000 houses short within the next five years”.
“The need is urgent and when you have rents increasing 24 per cent in the last 12 months, clearly we’ve got a disconnection between supply and demand that we have to start correcting,” he said.
Tom Forrest, who heads the developer lobby Urban Taskforce, said year-on-year data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed “completions for all dwellings languishing around the 47,000 mark, with multi-unit dwellings continuing to fall”.
“The housing supply pipeline is running dry, and this data gives renewed impetus to the Minns government to push ahead on broader pro-housing reform,” Forrest said.
Resolve director Jim Reed said Sydney residents had accepted that the city desperately needed more homes to keep up with increasing demand.
“Housing is such a pressing issue for Sydneysiders that they are siding with the new government’s plan to override councils on building heights and density approvals,” Reed said.
“They realise that the reality is that only an increase in supply will fix the problem.”
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