Jill Ball, Brunswick Heads
Regarding the DA for the boarding house in Bayside Brunswick Heads. In 2012 a 27-room boarding house was proposed at the gym site in Teven Street, Brunswick Heads. The Byron Shire Council opposed the development and the owners appealed to the Land and Environment Court.
At that time, I was president of the Brunswick Heads Progress Association (BHPA) and I spoke against the development at the tribunal. The Commissioner, Sue Harris, dismissed the appeal, stating, among other things, that the development was not compatible with the local area, which had been agreed by both parties as consisting largely of single houses with some medium density and commercial development.
Buzzwords like low cost, affordable, secure new age boarding house, urban consolidation, low to moderate cost accommodation, are used to woo the decision makers and councillors, all of whom would dearly love an easy answer to our shortage of housing. Only government owned or run social housing is genuinely affordable. Self-declared ‘for profit’ entities cannot be trusted to maintain security of tenure into the future.
The local community united in 2012 to save Bruns from totally inappropriate development, I urge Bayside Bruns and Brunswick Heads locals to lobby your councillors and local members of parliament to oppose this DA. Nothing has changed since 2012 in Bruns to make it a more suitable area for a boarding house.