A lack of planning and housing stock, amidst a booming property market were two key reasons for the housing crisis highlighted by local community housing providers at a Roundtable on Tuesday, November 30.
Around eight community housing providers attended the discussion along with NSW Opposition Leader, Chris Minns, at the University of Newcastle’s Ourimbah campus.
Issues raised included land tax, stigmas associated with shared accommodation, the influence of developers on the market and the impact of short-term rentals and AirBnBs.
Minns said he was “very concerned” about the housing crisis on the Coast after the roundtable discussion.
“The statistics are quite troubling,” Minns said.
“You’ve got rental vacancies dropping from 4.5 per cent to less than one per cent which means that many people, even if they have got the means to pay for rent, they can’t access it,” he said.
“It has real world implications.
“We heard from one of the providers today that suggested they had a single affordable housing unit and they had 80 applications and it was gone that morning which implies we have a real supply and demand issue.
“The main issue [we’ve heard today] is about the important role that coordination and planning from the state and local government can have if we can get some private capital and some Commonwealth funds coming into the marketplace.
“Federal Labor has got an ambitious goal in relation to social and affordable housing – which is welcome and important – but we need to make sure it’s spent talking with locals and that it’s rolled out in the right way.
“The providers here, whether they are community housing associations or St Vincent’s De Paul, are just trying to keep their head above the water and the pool is just constantly filling.
CEO of Bungree Aboriginal Association, Suzanne Naden, said the Tuggerah-based service was seeing the impact of developers on the market firsthand.
“We are different from other Aboriginal community providers, we provide disability services, education, aged care, housing … we’re quite literally birth to death,” Naden said.
“We currently have 45 properties on the Coast [and] our priority is to transform our properties into two duplexes so we can accommodate more people.
“In the last six weeks we’ve had our buyer agents out looking and they have been out-bid every time by developers.”
The cost of rent on the Central Coast has jumped three times as much in the last year than it has in Sydney, with a jump of 15.3 per cent in Forresters Beach, 13 per cent in Bateau Bay and 12.2 per cent in The Entrance North.
Minns said the issues raised at Tuesday’s Roundtable would help form NSW Labor’s ‘comprehensive’ housing plan going into the next state election in 2023.
Maisy Rae