“A lost opportunity”: City of Sydney blocks prioritising funds for Aboriginal housing providers
Image: Development site in a Sydney suburb. Taras Vyshnya, Shutterstock
by HOPE PRATT
The City of Sydney has blocked amendments to prioritise funds for Aboriginal housing providers, voting instead to allocate $200 million in affordable housing contributions to three large providers.
The council collects around $40 million a year in developer contributions towards affordable housing. These are then passed on to a Community Housing Provider (CHP), and used to create new, permanent affordable or social housing.
“We are talking about $200 million in public funding, a huge amount, which the current city administration voted to direct to the largest and most well established housing providers only for at least the next five years.”
“We have clear priorities to create new affordable housing in the city,” she continued. “But we also have a priority to support more diversity in the organisations building affordable and social housing.”
“Monday’s council decision was a lost opportunity to do that.”
Efforts to solve the housing crisis
Currently, under the council’s new policy, Aboriginal-led housing organisations, disability housing bodies, women’s refuges and tenant-led housing like cooperatives are unable to access the funds.
“To solve the housing crisis we need to be more creative,” said Cr Ellsmore. “We need to better support diverse and tenant-led housing projects, alongside the established big community housing groups.”
Independent Councillor Yvonne Weldon added that she was “unconvinced” the City had done its job to maximise housing support.
In June 2023, Council adopted an interim plan for the Affordable Housing Contributions Distribution Plan. This was to help guide the funds from the City of Sydney Affordable Housing Contribution Program to CHPs.
The allocated funds were set to be split equally between City West, Bridge Housing and St George Community Housing over the next 5 years.
The plan was deferred until July 2024, due to concerns over the risk to existing development plans and whether the elected CHPs would be able to shoulder the projects.
The suspension was to allow for further consultation with CHPs and to wait for the forthcoming Federal and State Government’s affordable housing policies to be announced.
Within these parameters, Councillor Ellsmore put forward her proposed amendments and argued the plan should be reviewed in 2 years instead of 5 years.
Amendments were voted down by Clover Moore Independents.
Council’s debate
Councillor (Waskam) Emelda Davis spoke against the motion, stating that due to the severity of the housing crisis, what was needed now was certainty.
“Get on board,” she said.
Councillor Davis also noted that all Tier 1 CHPs provided support for diverse communities.
Councillor HY William Chan echoed her pushback, arguing that the proposed shortened time to the Distribution Plan put already progressing development projects at risk and wouldn’t provide adequate time for future developments.
Liberal Councillor Shauna Jarrett, who was in support of the amendments, said she was “not surprised that the Lord Mayor and her team voted against the amendment to prioritise funds for Aboriginal housing providers in the City.”
“It is extremely ironic that the Lord Mayor and her team call themselves ‘independents’ when they do not act upon independent thought and actually stop and think to listen to different suggestions that would benefit the community, or allow for the flexibility required to combat the current housing crisis,” she told City Hub.
Labor Councillor Linda Scott said the move contradicts local governments’ commitment to Closing the Gap targets.
“Local governments are proudly signatories to the National Closing the Gap targets, heralding the need for more action to support indigenous community controlled organisations to provide services with indigenous communities, such as those in inner city Sydney,” she told City Hub.
“Sadly, Lord Mayor Clover Moore’s actions to defeat our moves to create more City support for Aboriginal Housing organisations flies in the face of local governments’ commitment to close the gap between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.”
“It’s time for change at the City of Sydney.”
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