Finding a place to live that is affordable was on last week’s Tweed Shire Council’s (TSC) agenda with Mayor Chris Cherry and Councillor Dr Nola Firth moving a Notice of Motion (NoM) to investigate ‘an Affordable Housing Contribution Scheme for the Tweed Shire’.
‘Tweed Shire has the very, very unfortunate statistic of having the highest increase in homelessness in New South Wales in a recent technical paper from last year when a statewide street count was done just prior to the just prior to “the great flood”,’ pointed out the Mayor.
‘We were already the highest increase in homelessness. And obviously, the flood had a massive impact in our Shire as well. So we have a very, very big problem with homelessness. We have a massive problem with affordability in our Shire and we can’t sit by and not do anything about it’.
What is affordable?
During the debate, Cr Rhiannon Brinsmead asked ‘what is affordable housing?’ pointing out that ‘what is considered affordable for some is really out of reach for others’.
It is a valid question to ask as under the NSW state government’s affordable housing SEPP for the addition of affordable housing into a development, developers are able to increase the coverage of the site with the buildings (floor/space ratio) and can reduce the provision of carparks. They are then required to rent out the affordable housing at 80 per cent of market value ‘for at least 15 years’. After 15 years the ‘affordable housing’ returns to the market rate.
However, for many the so-called ‘affordable housing’ is still not accessible with some affordable housing rentals in the region requiring potential renters to have a minimum income of $100,000 a year to even apply for it.
The accepted definition of ‘Housing stress is typically described as lower-income households that spend more than 30 per cent of gross income on housing costs’ according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). So the question of how ‘affordable housing’ is defined is a key aspect of any policy that is being developed to address the housing shortage, not only in Tweed Shire, but across the Northern Rivers.
Turning a sod
The NoM specifically highlighted both the Kings Forest and Cobaki development sites, which will provide approximately 20,000 lots for development to be released over the next 20 years. Both sites are being developed by Leda Holdings Pty Ltd.
Mayor Cherry said that the NoM was ‘wanting to ask the general manager to work with the proponents of Kings Forest and Cobaki in order to achieve affordable housing and key worker housing [on those sites] as a really important outcome’.
‘I attended an Affordable Housing Conference in Sydney recently [and] there were a lot of providers there. They said the thing that we could do to help the most would be to set up a Contribution Scheme. The housing SEPP has shown that the state government now wants all of our councils to do this. It’s about trying to provide a way forward to obtain affordable housing on the ground. We’ve been thinking that the market would provide it but we’ve been shown that the market will not provide it. We really need to do something different. We can’t keep doing the same thing and expect it to change.’
Councillor Warren Polglase told the meeting that he had spoken to Bob Earl from Leda about the potential of affordable housing at Cobaki and that he had said ‘put something to me’. Cr Polglase said that might lead to getting affordable housing underway within 12 months at that site.
Cr Firth who seconded the motion said, ‘We’re talking about affordable or social housing in perpetuity, not just for ten years becaus that doesn’t really work.’
The motion also sought to create ‘a public register of all land that is Council or state-owned in the Tweed Shire that is currently residentially zoned or within a transport corridor/ road reserve’. Cr Cherry said this was specifically trying to bring the rail corridor into consideration for affordable housing.
All councillors voted in favour of the motion.
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