How do we encourage people who own secondary dwellings, dual occupancies and investment properties in the Shire to put them on the long-term rental market rather than posting them on Airbnb?
This is the question councillors will tackle at this week’s Council meeting, as they consider a report on a suite of possible measures to achieve this goal.
The report, from Council’s Director of Sustainable Environment and Economy, Shannon Burt, follows previous attempts to incentivise the development of long-term or permanent rental accommodation that were limited in their success.
The most notable was Council’s policy of waiving developer contributions for new secondary dwellings where the owner agreed to use only as long-term rentals.
As noted in Ms Burt’s report, this strategy did not achieve its intended affect, with a significant number of locals putting the dwellings on the short-term holiday rental market, despite the agreement they made with Council.
There was a significant cost to Council as a result of this waiver, which has not been recouped.
According to Ms Burt, Council learnt that ‘a better mechanism/s is needed to incentivise, and then enforce the future use of dwellings for the purposes of providing affordable and/or permanent accommodation’.
Councillors will this week consider a range of other measures that would either amend the existing Affordable Housing Contributions Policy or, form part of an entirely new policy.
Rate rebates
One of the options on the table is for Council to look to providing rate rebates and/or defer/waive other fees and charges for dwellings or secondary dwellings nominated for permanent rental accommodation.
However, the report noted that this would result in a loss of income to Council, which would need to be offset by an alternate funding source, and/or, be offered as a standalone subsidy or grant.
‘A broad application of a rate rebate or fee waiver or deferral is not supported without further work on financial impacts,’ Ms Burt said.
Another measure to be considered is for landowners to enter into a formal agreement with a community housing provider to lease their property on the private rental market.
Property register
Council would include the property details on a register for the purposes of monitoring compliance.
There is also the option for the landowner to enter into a planning agreement with Council, either at rezoning or DA stage to provide permanent affordable housing.
One final option is for the landowner to agree to execute any document necessary to create a restriction on the use of the land so as to prohibit it being used for shorter-term holiday letting as part of the development consent process.
However, Ms Burt noted that imposing a condition as part of the development consent that restricts the future use of the development for STRA was ‘complicated in law’.
She also offered the opinion that, following development of a new or amended Affordable Housing Contributions Policy, a pilot program would be the most appropriate way to test interest in and the effectiveness of the various mechanisms.
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