How many dwellings might there be?
Unit numbers (front doors)
v residential floor space
The planning proposal proposes 28.2% of the front doors will
be social housing but only 26.5% of the residential floor space. Each
affordable home also will be smaller with 7.5% of front doors taking up 7% of
the floor space. Together social and affordable housing will make up 35.7% of
the front doors but only 33.5% of the floor space.
This contrasts with the Elizabeth Street development
planning controls where a minimum of 30% residential floor space has been set
for social and if LAHC wishes some affordable housing. This figure was argued
on the basis of LAHC’s Communities Plus model of delivering a 30:70 split
between social and private housing in their developments. Tenants over the
years have questioned if 70:30 represented the number of units or the area and
there has never been a clear answer from LAHC and even now we seem to have one
approach on Elizabeth Street (floor area) and a different one in Waterloo
(front doors).
One area of concern to tenants has been the low number of
additional social housing units produced from the development. Currently there
are 749 social housing units on the planning proposal site. The planning
proposal proposes 847 social housing units from the development an increase of 98
units. If the development delivered 30% of the residential gross floor area as
social housing there could be many more social housing units.
Unpacking the units
numbers (front doors) in the planning proposal
One of the big benefits for LAHC is that they get 749 aged
social housing units replaced by new lower maintenance social housing units as
well as the 98 additional units. Unlike Elizabeth Street Redfern, Waterloo also
gets 227 affordable housing units. Add in the 1,938 private units and you have
an increase across the public housing land of 2263 housing units. All figures before the 10% uplift – so to get the likely outcome add 10% to these figures and the figures below.
So where did the final figures come from? If you exclude the
affordable housing you have the development delivering 2785 units of which
social housing is 847 (30.4%) and privatise housing units 1938 (69.5%). So at
that level you have 30:70 on housing units or front doors.
For the affordable housing component, the department have
used the upper end Greater Sydney Commission proposal that affordable housing
should be 5-10% of uplift. The uplift from the Waterloo public housing site
from the current 749 to the 3012 total number of units proposed is 2263 units,
10% of that uplift gives 226.3 units rounded up to 227!
So LAHC can argue on a front door basis they delivered 30:70
on social housing compared to private housing and DPE can argue they delivered
10% affordable housing on the uplift. When you put all the front units / doors together
you get 28.2% social housing, 7.5% affordable housing and 64.3% private
housing.
LAHC’s self-funding constraints
All of this is based on LAHC having a requirement from
Government to self-fund and hence to sell off public housing land to achieve that.
REDWatch and housing advocates have argued that the Government, both state and
federal, should be investing in new public housing to meet the waiting list
rather than just renewing stock and getting minimal increases at the expense of
selling off public housing land.
The 30:70 formula did not take into account the need for
affordable housing and selling off social housing land for affordable housing
is also not a good use of social housing lands. There is a need for government
investment and potentially we can look at some of the other housing mix models
overseas that might deliver more social and affordable housing on government
owned land.
There is still plenty of room for discussion about housing
mix both in the planning proposal and for government long
term funding rather than selling off public housing land.