Future Victoria: Delays To Affordable Housing
The discovery of tiny critters, including rare frogs, are causing “years”-long delays to affordable housing in Victoria’s outer suburbs, Villawood Properties executive director Rory Costelloe told the Future Victoria event.
Mr Costelloe, speaking on a panel alongside Swinburne University Professor Laura-Anne Bull and Transurban chief executive Michelle Jablko, pointed the finger at federal environment laws for huge delays to housing across greenfield sites.
He said the process of protecting recently rediscovered “little critters”, including the growling grass frog, was holding up new developments for “years”.
The Herald Sun revealed last year that more than 300,000 potential homes from Sunbury to Geelong were delayed and under threat due to the rediscovery of the critically endangered grassland earless dragon.
“It’s amazing how this federal system, federal environment laws, are holding up development in this state, seriously holding it up for years,” he said.
Mr Costelloe urged the state government to start focusing on building more homes, particularly in the outer ring, and not raising more taxes.
“So to me, affordability is not raising new taxes to pay for social housing,” he said.
“Affordability is getting supply.”
As the Allan government forges ahead with its apartment blitz, Mr Costelloe said most immigrants that come to Australia didn’t come to live in a high-rise apartment.
“They come to live in a detached house,” he said.
“(There is) plenty of space between the region, the outer growth areas, middle ring.”
He said a new fast-tracked permit approvals process for townhouses and apartments up to three storeys, however, would “really help bring people back into the burbs”.
