Road to World Homeless Day 2022: Week 3
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: Housing delayed is housing denied
Modelling from the NHFIC predicts that between 2025–2032, Australia will have a housing shortage of 163,400 homes. This is to say nothing of our current shortage, which we don’t have accurate data for. In an ideal world, we’d magically produce this shortfall ready for people to move in tomorrow. Of course, this just isn’t possible; creating new homes requires time. However, there are various factors that are needlessly delaying – and therefore denying – housing.
One is our complex and multi-layered planning system. The Queensland Government sets 41 zones that local governments can choose from. Local governments use most of these zones and may also create sub-precincts within each zone. On top of that can be a neighbourhood plan, also with multiple precincts, and then a suite of overlays (or constraints) and overlay precincts. Each local government applies this suite of zones and precincts differently across Queensland, and it’s a completely different system again in each State and Territory. Sometimes, the various levels of regulation will contradict each other.
Japan is an inspiring comparison. They have a national planning system with only 12 zones based on form and tolerances, rather than exclusions. That means there’s no differentiation of types of residential uses, instead focusing on form.
Our system is time-consuming and complicated; it can take months, even years to get an approval. You can’t start building without approval, so the longer the approval process, the longer it takes to deliver housing. As the saying goes, “time is money”, so every extra week or month adds cost to the end product. And the complexity of our planning system doesn’t discriminate between market rate or affordable housing. In fact, it can have a greater negative impact on affordable housing. Affordable projects often attract NIMBY sentiment, with established residents reacting more strongly to a different style of housing or homeowner. Affordable projects also often have tighter margins, so don’t have the funds to spend on delayed approval. Market rate housing can also become financially unfeasible if delayed long enough; when impact assessable, feasibilities need to factor in the cost of appeal.
The Solution: Make providing housing easier
There are a couple of ways we could roll back red tape to make it easier to provide more housing.
We could make some missing middle housing types accepted development in low density suburbs, like duplexes and even triplexes or quadplexes on corner sites. Like a house today, any development would still need building approval, which oversees plans, measurements, and engineering. However, as long as it met code requirements, it wouldn’t need to get planning approval. In 2021, New Zealand passed a law that allows three dwellings up to three storeys on a lot without planning approval.
We could allow more missing middle housing within a set distance of high frequency public transport like railway stations, busway stations and ferry terminals. And reduce minimum lot sizes too.
We should also be encouraging affordable housing by making it eligible for a streamlined application process.
And we could reduce or eliminate minimum standards for car parking where close to transit. Good transit is pointless unless you can live near it.
Perhaps the most important thing we can do is engage with our friends, family, colleagues, and neighbours about the benefits of good development.
