Housing policy should be for us all

A short while ago, Central Coast Council announced a two-year project to plan the redevelopment of Woy Woy Town Centre.

Now, out of the blue and without any evidence or justification, a proposal appears to alter the whole face of Woy Woy through: "the active creation of affordable and alternative housing through direct funding, partnerships and innovative models of housing and service delivery."

However, from this mountain of bombast emerges the mouse of a few marginal changes to the zoning provisions, designed to increase developer profits by increasing densities, raising heights and reducing the requirements for parking, but with imperceptible relationship to the supposed goals of the changes.

Where is the overall framework for these proposals?

What is the civic goal to be achieved by these changes?

Where are the considerations of environmental impact?

Without some vision of the end-result, we shall just have more lumpy apartment blocks jammed onto existing lots (no doubt, with variations to the code required to meet the expediencies of each lot) and haphazard provision of supporting commercial and access facilities.

There is an opportunity to make something fresh of Woy Woy, but this is certainly not the way to go about it.

The Council is obsessed with building-height restrictions, although, in reality, the height of an individual building is unimportant, if it is properly designed and properly related to the urban landscape it inhabits.

Yet Council prefers the blunt instrument of setback and coverage standards which have no rational basis and have produced most of the unsightly development that we see around the city.

We can expect the same result of these changes in Woy Woy.

As for some of the other provisions, it is mind-boggling that the Council considers a ratio of 0.2 cars per unit appropriate for a boarding house.

I have lived in a boarding house, and every single resident had a car.

What research has the Council done to conclude that four-fifths of boarding-house residents will not own a car or have visitors with cars?

Furthermore, as Peninsula Chamber of Commerce president Matthew Wales, has pointed out, the traffic arrangements of the Woy Woy Town Centre are totally unsatisfactory at the moment, but nothing seems to be suggested for dealing with this crucial aspect of the Centre's future.

Where is the analysis of car, bus, bicycle, truck and pedestrian movements within this soon to be densified precinct?

How will access to the railway station be enhanced?

How does utilization of the Woy Woy Wharf fit into this non-grand scheme of things?

To describe this proposal as half-baked would be an overstatement.

It is quarter-baked at best.

As for the ostensible benefits of the changes, does anyone seriously believe that the proposed measures will make housing affordable for low-income households?

The ideas propounded have been floating around for decades, with a record of almost total, unrelieved failure, and, even if we were naive enough to believe that the Council would follow through, with imagination and energy, the implementation of the ideas set forth, the results would have a negligible impact on the overall housing conditions of low-income and disadvantaged citizens.

This is little more than a feel-good approach to the problem.

It is appropriate for the city to have a housing policy, but it should be a comprehensive housing policy for all social and income cohorts, not a paternalistic (and largely futile) effort to single out the deserving poor, without taking into account the full context of all the city's future needs.

Email, 24 Oct 2018

Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy