A draft Ballina Shire Housing strategy is on public exhibition until mid-March, with the council to receive community feedback later this year.
Ballina Shire Council Strategic Planning Manager Paula Newman says the strategy identifies gaps in housing supply and ‘explores Council’s role in planning for and encouraging housing that meets our community’s needs’.
Twenty-three actions are included in the strategy, which the council is to ‘implement over the next 20 years to encourage more available housing’, says Ms Newman.
Four key principles are listed, which the council says will guide action:
- Making housing available to local workers and residents;
- Encouragement of diverse housing sizes and types;
- Encouragement of walkable neighbourhoods with smaller dwellings located close to shops and services;
- New homes that are resilient to natural disasters and housing stress.
Ms Newman says the strategy recognises ‘no single organisation can resolve the complexity of local housing issues’ but the council can ‘work in partnership with key stakeholders, take the lead on advocacy initiatives, and ensure planning controls contribute to good housing outcomes’.
Underwhelming response to council staff public consultation on housing
The release of the draft strategy comes after what Ballina Council staff say was a series of housing workshops in Ballina, Lennox Head and Alstonville/Wollongbar as well as a community survey collecting housing stories in late 2022.
Fifty-six people went to the workshops and seventy-five people responded to the survey.
Survey respondents were more likely to be living in couples with or without children, in separate houses with three or more bedrooms that they owned outright or had a mortgage on, while data from face-to-face respondents wasn’t reported.
No responses from people under the age of 24 were recorded in the survey data, despite the cohort accounting for roughly 25% of the Ballina Shire population.
People in their fifties made up less than 15% of the population but accounted for more than 30% of survey responses.
People aged between 35 and 49 and 70 and 84 were also over-represented in survey responses compared to Ballina Shire population data.
Concerns over future housing needs
Perhaps predictably, nearly 70% said they their housing met their needs but 52% said they didn’t think it would meet their needs in ten to twenty years’ time.
Those that said their housing wouldn’t meet future needs said they either needed more space to accommodate an expanding family or less space to manage as they grew older.
Those who said their housing would meet their future needs said they’d already downsized or upgraded their homes accordingly.
Information in the summary said there was ‘a number of comments related to concerns over housing stress / affordability and lack of security of tenure which will necessitate a move in the future’.
The summary also noted how 37% of respondents said intergenerational housing formed part of their future housing plans.
Calls to protect farming and wildlife, build shop-top housing
A long list of concerns from respondents around housing were listed, ranging from impacts of short-term rental accommodation to the size of subdivisions and impacts of development on infrastructure, along with a long list of suggestions for improvements.
Workshop participants also came up with a list of suggestions as follows:
- improve planning particularly in relation to the provision of appropriate and well-located infrastructure in association with new development;
- improve decision-making processes – views were split between those wanting more consistency applying to rules, compared with those wanting more flexibility in dealing with applicants;
- adjust the planning system to deliver ‘less-onerous rules’ and faster, more efficient approvals, including through ‘improved master planning’;
- allow diversity in housing whilst maintaining existing character;
- address ‘land supply bottlenecks’ such as the availability of appropriately zoned land, infrastructure provision and land-banking by developers;
- encourage innovation in relation to sustainability and affordable housing projects and new building methods and materials;
- address incentives that are producing perverse outcomes, such as those relating to tax concessions, short-term rental accommodation and first home buyer schemes which ‘add to demand without addressing supply’;
- invest in infrastructure, particularly relating to open space, transport infrastructure and related social services (including child-care, school education and aged care);
- introduce policies to capture social value such as the minimum provision of affordable housing in association with new large developments;
- address inequality that makes house ownership out of reach of lower-income households.
Workshop participants were also asked to map out where they would be tolerant of housing development and what sort.
The results showed people were keen to preserve farming and ecologically sensitive areas from development and to allow more high density in Ballina’s CBD area, including shop-top housing.
A variety of lot sizes in outer urban areas was supported.
Mixed views on the development of agricultural land were reported, with some support for giving consideration to enabling some rural subdivision and multiple-dwellings on rural lots.
Where rural development was supported, the summary said comments tended to support the investigation of the ‘third village concept’, where ‘housing outcomes can be assured’.
The summary said this meant well-planned, infrastructure provided and not land-banked by developers.
