Leichhardt Mayor calls for affordable housing in face of “obscene” cost of housing.
Image: Micro Apartments.
BY KENJI SATO
Leichhardt Mayor Darcy Byrne has called on the State Government to legislate mandatory targets for affordable housing across NSW.
Clr Byrne has joined with the NSW Federation of Housing Associations in pushing for a 30% target for affordable housing on all new housing stock on government-owned land.
“Sydney is becoming more segregated than ever before because of the obscene cost of housing in the inner city,” Clr Byrne said.
“It’s time for Councils like Leichhardt to speak out and say that we want more affordable housing so that people can afford to live here… but without ambitious targets and legislation from the State Government our hands are tied,” he said.
But President of community group Save Our Suburbs Dr Tony Recsei said that mandating affordable housing targets would not solve the root of the problem.
“If developers have to build a certain proportion of houses as affordable, they add the cost of that onto the other houses. So the average cost won’t decrease,” Dr Recsei said.
“The only real way to provide affordable housing is to increase the housing supply. The government must stop restricting the release of land for their ideological purposes.
“They’re putting a growth ring restriction around Sydney to force people into higher densities. That causes a shortage of land and the price of accommodation went up. That’s not only happened in Sydney, it’s happened all over the world.”
Dr Recsei said that the rising house prices were the result of a “serious failure of government”, and that not enough land was being released to accommodate the “60,000” people who move to Sydney every year.
“The government must allow as much land to be leased for housing as it equates to the demand, which is what they used to do in the 1950’s, when everybody could afford a house,” he said.
But Professor Peter Phibbs, the Chair of Urban and Regional Planning and Policy at the University of Sydney, said that increasing the supply of housing is not the solution.
“If that’s all you do you won’t attack the problem. You should provide more houses but unless you do something about trying to moderate demand, particularly in booms, you won’t actually really attack price outcomes in any significant way,” Professor Phibbs said.
“Affordable housing targets are a very good idea. But the biggest thing is the capital gains tax discount which works in tandem with negative gearing. It really just means that speculating properties becomes a pretty good deal – it’s such a tax favoured investment.
“At the moment, we’re just attracting speculative investors in the boom and they’re using a lot of tax dollars, buying existing houses, and pushing the prices up. So if you want a supply strategy, target your tax benefits for new supply.”
