HOUSING - Illawarra Over The Next 20 Years
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The Illawarra might find itself without enough houses for the population if the current pace of building doesn't increase.
The Planning NSW discussion paper states 4677 new houses were built in the region in the past five years. That rate won't be good enough to meet the predicted need for 31,300 new homes by 2031.
Those homes will include detached dwellings as well as inner-city apartment living currently being promoted in the Illawarra.
20-year plan: Our future | Employment | Transport | Infrastructure
Brett Whitworth, regional director for southern region for Planning NSW, said the region was already doing quite well in redeveloping existing space in urban areas.
The paper states one way to speed up the build rate of new houses is to reduce red tape to allow developers to get new land releases to the market faster, thus making it more financially feasible for developers.
Another way to ensure more houses are built is to tackle the issue of housing affordability. If people can't afford to buy houses, then it follows that fewer will be built.
"Housing prices are very definitely based on the demand the people have for that housing," Mr Whitworth said.
"If you can increase the supply of that housing, if you can make sure that you've got a number of different locations and a number of different options for people to purchase land, so it's not all at West Dapto or it's not all at Shell Cove, that in itself can help to give people greater options and choice and help to drive down housing prices or at least put a lid on them increasing."
Mr Whitworth said although the escarpment did limit the space available to build, there would be enough to build those 31,300 new dwellings.
"It does but by no means are we at that point yet and I don't think we will be at that point within the lifetime of this draft regional growth plan, which is a 20-year plan."
Monitoring the size of new lots is crucial to ensuring capacity is not exceeded.
"The other thing is that we're being very cautious about how those new release areas are being developed," he said. "We're saying that if you're going to develop them, that you need to make sure they're at appropriate densities. We're not allowing people to have one, two or three-acre blocks out there through West Dapto."
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