NSW Needs 100,000 New Homes to Beat Housing Stress
28 July 2016 at 2:43 pm
New South Wales needs 100,000 new social and affordable houses over the next 20 years to prevent decade-long waiting lists blowing out even further, according to a new report from the University of Sydney.
NSW Federation of Housing Associations CEO Wendy Hayhurst said the analysis released Thursday at the 2016 Affordable Housing Conference showed NSW must provide at least 4,900 new affordable homes a year until 2036 just to maintain current waiting lists.
NSW will account for more than half the national shortfall in housing over the next decade, the conference heard.
“NSW has the lowest home-ownership rates in the country and the biggest shortage of social and affordable housing, but some of the best opportunities for jobs,” Hayhurst said.
“We know we can expect another 1.6 million people in Sydney by 2036 but while there’s a push to sort out transport and create new economic hubs we have no plan for how we’re going to house all these new households.
“The Sydney University analysis shows that NSW alone needs 100,000 new social and affordable houses over the next 20 years – without accounting for population growth or growing take up of affordable housing models by key workers and Generation Rent.”
Hayhurst said the NSW and federal governments were placing too much reliance on the real estate market to solve the problem.
“International experience shows that growth of this scale requires government leadership through planning reforms and economic signals that persuade the superannuation funds to make large scale investments in affordable housing,” she said.
“Over the next two days more than 500 people will attend the state’s biggest housing event to hear experts from around the globe provide the answers to the unaffordability crisis.”
Homelessness NSW CEO Katherine McKernan said crisis homelessness services were experiencing unprecedented demand as the affordability crisis escalated, and services were backlogged because they can’t find long term accommodation for clients.
“According to the 2011 Census on any given night one in 200 people are homeless across Australia. There’s no question the 2016 Census, which begins on 9 August, will find an increase in the number of homeless people – rough sleepers, young people and women and children escaping domestic and family violence,” McKernan said.
