Premier Chris Minns has flagged further reforms to fix the state’s housing affordability crisis from next year, with planning experts saying it is time to tackle infrastructure.
Minns said the current crop of housing reforms – which includes building apartments around train stations and more mid-rise apartments in suburbia to be rolled out within six months – might not be enough to relieve the pressure on housing affordability.
Minns has flagged reforms and planning experts say infrastructure is the logical next step in fixing housing in Sydney.Credit: Kate Geraghty
“But we reserve the right to keep going. And my suspicion is, you have to keep going because the pressure on housing, as Sydney is the second most expensive city in the world, isn’t just going to stop, and we need to get more homes built, particularly for young people,” Minns said.
He defended the current planning reform timeline under which more terraces, townhouses and small apartment blocks near transport hubs and town centres would be built after planning laws are changed after council elections in September.
“But the most of it, the vast majority of it, the bulk of it will be done by the end of the year, which is an important achievement,” he said.
Committee for Sydney planning policy manager Estelle Grech acknowledged some of Minns’ housing reforms, such as low and mid-rise housing, were previously considered politically impossible. However, she said there was still low-hanging fruit such as removing no-grounds evictions for renters, which the government committed to but is yet to legislate.
Under current market conditions, with increasing building costs, it is difficult to supply houses at a price residents are willing to pay.Credit: Peter Rae
“More expensive levers are going to need to be pulled if we’re to ensure Sydney is a great place to live for years to come … Unlike planning reforms, investments in infrastructure don’t come cheap, but they’re needed for Sydney to transition to being one of the world’s great high-density cities,” she said.
The government has so far been restrained when it comes to building transport infrastructure: it has rejected calls to build a light rail down Parramatta Road due to the cost of it. The previous government built the light rail down George Street, the WestConnex motorway and a metro network.