Shellharbour will have more than enough houses to cater for its growing population over the next 20 years.
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Problem is, buying one is currently out of reach for the vast majority of the city's residents.
That's the message behind the city's new housing strategy, which highlights a need for smaller and more affordable homes, located close to town centres, near public transport and possibly within "greenfield" development projects like Shell Cove, Calderwood and Tullimbar.
The strategy, which was unanimously adopted by councillors at their final meeting for the year, says existing development controls across the city will "more than adequately provide" the projected demand for 10,625 new homes by 2041.
However, it also reveals that the current "purchase stock" is unaffordable for about two-thirds of the population, who have very low, low or even moderate incomes.
In figures included in the lengthy new strategy, the council says almost 11,000 households fall into the low and very low income category. A further 22 per cent (5,243) of Shellharbour households are deemed to have a moderate income.
For most of these families "purchasing a dwelling is out of reach," the council strategy says.
The statistics included with the report show that 98.9 per cent of very low income and 97.8 per cent of low income households can't afford any Shellharbour homes.
Disturbingly, the latest figures show all but 6.9 per cent of homes are now out of reach for moderate income households - a massive jump from previous years when at least half the homes were judged to be affordable for families with a moderate income.
Mayor Marianne Saliba said she was increasingly worried about worsening housing affordability, and said the council's power to change the situation - despite a massive development boom - was limited.
"Housing is at the whim of the market, and there is a huge demand for houses in Shellharbour - a few years ago, our housing value went up 35 per cent," she said.
"I've got two children looking to buy property in Shellharbour, and you're looking at a small house in Albion Park costing six or seven hundred thousand dollars. For young people, that's unaffordable."
The council's housing strategy says there is a need for "the provision of smaller, more affordable housing products to meet the requirements of the Shellharbour community for people of all life stages and ages."
It suggests affordable social and public housing could be provided through the redevelopment of existing, aged public housing stock, to provide products that are better suited to resident needs.
Additionally, the NSW Government's new medium density housing code could be applied at Tullimbar and Calderwood, which would allow developers to build smaller, more densely populated homes.
"We're doing, from our perspective, what we can to address this issue," Cr Saliba said.
"We're providing more than the state government's expectation in terms of the number of new homes in our area, but the issue is not that there's plenty of homes, because people from out of the area are buying them.
"I'd like to see the state government get real about affordable housing."
Cr Saliba said state policies - like the Affordable Housing SEPP - did not work to keep housing costs low, and said she would personally like the state government, or another organisation, to run an affordable housing corporation.
This, she said, could allow lower income buyers to split the deposit for a home with a dedicated affordable housing organisation, and then build up equity on their share of the house over time.