Greater than two-thirds of NSW public land appropriate for housing offered to personal builders

The New South Wales authorities has offered greater than two-thirds of publicly owned websites recognized as surplus and appropriate for housing to personal builders because of its much-vaunted statewide property audit.

Many websites are being offered with out necessities for social or reasonably priced housing.

Regardless of a Labor coverage directing that authorities land appropriate for housing ought to be prioritised for public housing, Properties NSW has purchased simply three of the 55 websites which have been recognized on the market. It’s now within the starting stage to assemble 208 properties. It has expressed curiosity in an additional seven websites.

“Homes NSW and Landcom have a first right of refusal on all sites identified as part of the land audit. Approximately a third of all sites identified have been transferred to or are currently undergoing due diligence by Homes NSW or Landcom,” a spokesperson for the Division of Lands mentioned in an announcement.

One other means of placing it: greater than two-thirds of the land goes to personal builders.

“It’s increasingly clear that this land audit is actually a scam – and it’s those struggling with the housing crisis who will suffer from this broken promise,” the NSW Greens MP Jenny Leong mentioned.

“What was an election commitment to identity public land in order to deliver more social and affordable housing has been exposed for what it really is – a systematic way of selling off public land to the highest bidder with no requirement for any social or affordable housing,” she mentioned.

The sale of surplus land is a part of the Minns Labor authorities’s plan to ship as much as 30,000 properties via the $6.6bn Constructing Properties for NSW program introduced within the 2024-25 funds.

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The federal government promised to construct 8,400 new public properties and an additional 21,000 reasonably priced and market-rate properties.

However progress has been sluggish. Leong mentioned not a single new dwelling has been constructed two years into this system.

Regardless of the acute scarcity of public housing and lengthy ready lists, the federal government had disposed of livable properties to the personal sector.

For instance, three terrace homes in Rozelle, which have been acquired throughout by Roads and Maritime in the course of the constructing of WestConnex, have been offered off to the personal market in April. They offered for between $1.6m and $2.33m.

A overview of presidency gross sales by the Guardian discovered that a lot of the vacant land being offered by the Minns authorities goes to personal sector builders, with no agency necessities for social or reasonably priced housing as a part of the phrases of sale.

The websites included:

A website at 164 Talavera Highway, Marsfield, additionally owned by Roads and Maritime, was offered for $4.4m to a developer for high-density improvement. The agent on the sale, Ray White’s Peter Vines, mentioned there was no requirement for social or reasonably priced housing. The client intends to construct pupil lodging, he mentioned.

A serious website at 870 Windsor Highway, Rouse Hill, not removed from the brand new metro station, is on the tender stage. The CBRE agent Ben Wicks mentioned there have been no agency necessities from the federal government about ranges of social and reasonably priced housing. Bidders had been invited to place in a number of proposals that included social and reasonably priced housing in addition to build-to-rent initiatives, he mentioned.

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A spokesperson for the minister for lands and property, Steve Kamper, mentioned: “The land audit has so far identified surplus government sites capable of delivering more than 9,000 homes.

“Any proceeds from surplus government sites developed into housing by the private sector will be directed back into the construction of new public housing.”

However this isn’t because it appears. Leong insisted that she has been instructed {that a} Treasury coverage requires land sale proceeds to be returned to the division that owned the land – usually the roads, training or well being departments.

NSW Properties clarified that “the sale of any private housing on these sites will be used to build public housing”. At this stage the sum of money it has acquired is “nil”.

Labor’s shifting sands

On the 2022 NSW Labor coverage convention, 800 delegates unanimously endorsed an bold public housing program. It dedicated the state Labor occasion to introducing legal guidelines banning “the sale, leasing, or outsourcing of any public housing assets or services”.

The decision additionally required Labor to extend the variety of public dwellings “at a rate exceeding private developments”.

Within the lead-up to the March state election, Labor promised residents of Sydney’s Redfern and Waterloo public housing estates {that a} Minns authorities would tear up the Coalition authorities’s plans to redevelop these estates.

After taking the reins, nonetheless, the premier, Chris Minns, sought to redefine his election commitments.

As he defined, his promise to “freeze the sale of all public and social housing” didn’t imply freezing present plans to demolish a complete property at Waterloo and rebuild it with the personal sector. As an alternative he would enhance it by guaranteeing that 30% of models remained social housing.

Asserting the coverage of promoting off surplus land for housing in Might 2023, Minns mentioned his goal was to make sure every new block would embody 30% social, reasonably priced or inclusive housing.

“It’s not privatisation even by the loosest definition of it,” he mentioned.

“We were very consistent and clear about our plans in relation to government land prior to the last election,” he mentioned.

Properties NSW initiatives

Properties NSW has acquired some websites and there will probably be some new public housing constructed.

The federal government mentioned an additional 9 websites throughout Sydney and three websites in regional NSW have been recognized for future housing improvement by both Landcom or in partnership with the personal sector, to permit the estimated supply of greater than 1300 market and reasonably priced properties.

However Landcom developments don’t essentially ship reasonably priced housing choices, with its temporary being to behave as a publicly owned industrial developer.

“If the NSW Labor government won’t even build public housing on public land that they already own, where will they build it?” Leong mentioned.

“Instead of identifying publicly owned land on which to deliver homes, NSW Labor has simply identified more things they want to flog off – this isn’t an ‘audit’ so much as a stocktake sale.”