A promise to halve planning times for social housing could help New South Wales (NSW) meet its share of national home-building goals, which government insists are still within reach despite stubbornly low approvals.
Australia’s most populous state needs to deliver 377,000 more homes over the five years to mid-2029 in order to meet a national target of an extra 1.2 million extra houses.
The NSW government on May 31 announced it would fast-track planning proposals for social and affordable housing, in conjunction with council-by-council housing targets and incentives already announced.
Prime Minister Albanese said the key to addressing the housing crisis would be more public housing, community housing, private rentals and supply.
“We need to ensure that approvals happen faster,” he said, speaking outside a refurbished social housing property in Sydney.
“We’ve got a target of 1.2 million homes. Is it ambitious? Yes, it is.
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“Can it be achieved? Yes, it can.”
Rezoning proposals from NSW housing agencies will be accelerated with a new team within the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure to manage applications.
Development assessment times for social and affordable housing would be cut in half by the changes, the government said.
The shift would also free up councils to focus on the assessment of local development applications, it added.
Planning Minister Paul Scully said all applications would still need to meet eligibility criteria including their alignment with state and commonwealth housing commitments.
“This newly created team will prioritise social and affordable housing by streamlining the application process to help deliver critical housing for people in need for years to come,” he said.
More than 57,000 applicants were on the NSW waitlist for social housing in March amid a dire shortage of available public and private dwellings.
Nearly 300 previously uninhabitable, vacant social houses had been restored and made available for tenants with funding from the federal $2 billion (US$1.3 billion) social housing accelerator pool.
But new housing approvals remain well below the 75,000 extra homes needed each year for NSW to meet its five-year target, with fewer than 45,000 homes cleared statewide in the year to April.
Urban Taskforce acting chief Stephen Fenn said the changes for social housing should be extended to large-scale private developments.
The private sector would need to deliver more than 95 percent of homes required under the national agreement and big projects would do the heavy lifting, he said.
As part of a major overhaul of planning rules, the government has rolled out floor-space and height bonuses for developments that include at least 15 percent social housing.
Housing Minister Rose Jackson said reforming the state’s planning rules was key in addressing the housing crisis.
“We need to expedite the delivery of more social and affordable homes and not have applications held up in unwieldy and complicated planning rules that don’t deliver homes for people in need,” she said.
