Road to World Homeless Day 2022: Week 2
Caravan parks and tent cities are overflowing with people who have been left behind by a lack of affordable housing to rent or buy.
In the lead up to World Homeless Day on 10 October, we’re going to highlight issues that have led to our alarming housing shortage – and some steps we could take to help fix it.
The Problem: Zoning Codes Mandate McMansions
In most of Brisbane’s low-density suburbs (which account for around 70% of all Brisbane’s residential areas), zoning laws mandate a minimum lot size for residential properties of 400m2. This is around a third larger than the minimum in neighbouring LGAs. As we’ve mentioned previously, all housing types except for the single-family house have essentially been banned in Brisbane’s low-density residential areas. This includes ‘missing middle’ housing types that are at house scale but contain multiple dwellings such as duplexes, townhouses, row houses, or villas.
Added to the situation is the influence that market and financial institutions have on house sizes. There’s nothing stopping you from building a small house on a large lot. But it’s more financially viable to make the most of your land with a large house. This is why we see a predominance of four-bedroom houses.
These factors have created a situation where most of our housing supply is ‘McMansions’ – large houses on large lots with large price tags. This simply does not meet the needs, let alone the budgets, of many Queenslanders.
The Solution: Let's reduce mandatory minimums
We ought to reduce the standard minimum lot size from 400m2 to 300m2 or less. We should also allow freehold subdivision of duplexes, villas, and townhouses into any size lots, provided the design meets the code.
While we’re at it, we should rethink minimum parking requirements. In Brisbane, each new development is required to provide a certain amount of off-street parking. This is the case even when the development is close to public transport and other amenities within walking distance. Constructing parking is deceptively expensive – between $50,000 and $80,000 per space – and the price is passed on in other ways. In residential buildings, parking can be the difference between housing being affordable or not. Minneapolis was the first of many US cities to reduce or remove parking minimums. This was part of larger zoning reform, but it is changes to parking that have had the greatest impact on unlocking affordable housing. Meanwhile in Brisbane, we raised the parking minimum as recently as 2019.
These mandatory minimums are restricting the amount of housing we can provide; they lower the yield for any given area and raise prices. To make housing more abundant and more affordable, we should reduce them. This isn’t about lowering standards; it’s about removing barriers to affordability.
