Developers not interested in demand for smaller homes
Recent news items have finally exploded the fantasy that the housing-supply crisis can be solved by political rhetoric and pious hopes.
Only a few months after announcements were made, with great fanfare, of housing targets in 2024 that would solve the shelter crisis, we are now being told that the real output will come nowhere near the much-vaunted projections, as anybody could have predicted who has the slightest understanding of the housing market.
In fact, the 2024 output will not only fall short of the targets but will actually underperform the already miserable 2023 supply figures that were hopelessly inadequate to meet need and that the new initiatives, we were told, were guaranteed to remedy.
All the spin that can be mustered cannot hide the fact that Albanese and the state Premiers have made themselves look like fools and untrustworthy fools at that.
The reason for the failure isn't hard to identify.
There were no policies to support the ambition.
There was no programme to give coherence to the objectives.
And there was no plan on which to base actions: other than that, the idea was perfect, by which I mean that the whole thing was nothing but a piece of PR tomfoolery that wasted everybody's time but gained a lot of exposure on TV, which, I suppose was the purpose of the exercise.
If the housing problem was as easy to solve as issuing a press release, it wouldn't have plagued us for the past two decades, and diverting attention from the hard work that's needed for a realistic approach to all its ramifications doesn't help.
Footling exercises like the Central Coast Housing Policy don't do much harm, because nobody takes them seriously, but we're entitled to expect better from National Cabinet.
Of course, developers would have us believe that all obstacles would disappear, if we simply abandoned all controls on housing and allowed free rein for the private sector to decide everything that needs to be done.
However, recent experience in Sydney suggests that even a slight loosening of the existing controls is more likely to lead to highly undesirable results than good ones.
Developers are interested in profit and will do whatever maximizes their returns, regardless of the public interest, and I don't detect much trust of developers' good intentions amongst the Central Coast public.
On the contrary, most people seem to feel that property speculators already have too much say in decision-making about the region's future and would prefer a Council that gives more emphasis to community values than money.
We shall, presumably, have the opportunity to test that perception in September.
In the real world, what is needed is more government intervention, not less, but intervention of the right kind.
We know, for example, that there will be a growing demand for smaller dwelling units but that the number of small units is actually declining, because developers are only interested in building large, family houses that give the highest return.
Unless the public sector is willing to influence the market directly, the disconnect between supply and demand will worsen.
Similarly, there are constant complaints about the poor quality of developer projects, because we rely on a piecemeal, haphazard approach to change in our neighbourhoods and have no overall goals against which projects can be measured.
In many instances, we shall see nothing but sub-standard outcomes, unless the Council is wiling to intervene directly in the land-assembly process and to establish guidelines on housing mixes and so on to which developers have to adhere.
There are many such avenues to explore, if we are serious about our intention to create an urban environment that we are comfortable in.
Unfortunately, this assumes both imagination and technical competence which seem to be qualities not much on display in our current administration.
What we have, rather, is an excess of picayune, bureaucratic concerns and little judgement about priorities and long-term thinking.
There is a tendency to lay much blame on the Administrator, but the conditions were the same long before his arrival.
What is saddening is that he had the opportunity to set a new course for the region and has failed signally to respond to the challenge.
We shall be lucky if we can just hold the line and don't suffer worse in the future.
SOURCE:
Email, 20 Jan 2024
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy