The NSW government has released for public discussion a proposal to develop a 'Metropolitan Strategy' for Sydney. Current estimates predict that Sydney will need to house another 1.4 million people by 2031, and another 570,000 homes will be needed.
Everyone says we already have a shortfall in housing in Sydney (shown by our current 1.7% rental vacancy rate), and that is getting worse every year. So why no flurry of construction? Instead, many construction companies have gone broke over the last year. Housing prices are probably too high already, but clearly not high enough for developers to make a decent profit.
Compulsory developer contributions to the Council for the provision of infrastructure (something our rates used to pay for) don't help, and neither does a slow approval process.
A shortfall of land is also suggested as a major problem, however this assumes that we continue our obsession with the ¼ acre (or 1 /8, or 1 /16) block of land. But this type of housing costs a lot more in infrastructure than urban in-fill.
The discussion paper is looking for solutions to these dilemmas. At Marque we love trawling through submissions to these proposals, partly because some really good ideas arise, but mainly because many of them are crazy. (We particularly like government imposed food and energy self-sufficient communes.)
The government hopes to have a solution by the end of the year. We're sure there's no magic bullet, but we can't wait to see their strategy.
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