The
low and mid-rise housing proposal has helped stoke the NIMBY (Not in my
backyard) and YIMBY (Yes in my back yard) debate. At the core of the
debate is that it is better
to increase density within the existing city footprint rather than to
continue to expand the urban area leading to an increase of time it
takes for people to travel and the need for new infrastructure as city
footprint expands.
As
soon as you decide to increase density without expanding the city’s
land area then the growth has to go into the existing city footprint and
suburbs and the city will
change.
People
attached to their existing communities are likely to resist that change
happening in their area thus making it difficult for the needed growth
to find somewhere
to happen. The NIMBY label is thrown at anyone who questions a proposal
to put increased density or a development in their neighbourhood.
Back
in 2013 REDWatch held a workshop on NIMBYs, and with the low and
mid-rise debate underway, it is probably a good time to revisit some of
that discussion – on the
REDWatch website you can see the NIMBY Discussion Points that we used to
unpack “NIMBYism, the good, the bad and the ugly”.
At
the time we suggested that there were some questions that should be
asked about a development to unpack our NIMBY responses. These questions
are still relevant today.
The questions were:
•
Does the development need to happen somewhere? (Is there a greater good?)
•
Are there local problems from the development? (Is there a local bad?)
•
What are problems – do they stand up to testing? (Are they real or imagined?)
•
Can the real problems be fixed or can they be compensated for?
•
Would you support the development elsewhere?
•
Do the problems go away for people if the development is elsewhere or does moving it create same or more problems?
One
concern with the current low and mid-rise proposal is that it proposes
to create blanket controls without local communities and Councils being
able to discuss such
questions and work out where growth is best to go within their local
government area (LGA) and communities.
In
the City of Sydney LGA this is not just for growth in housing, but also
for growth in employment, entertainment, community facilities and other
infrastructure to accommodate
the growth in housing and employment. The City of Sydney has argued
that the NSW government setting growth targets and then letting Council
and communities work out where best to put that growth is a better
approach than setting non-refusal standards for housing
zoning.
There
is a view in parts of state government, backed by the YIMBY push, that
getting rid of existing planning controls will speed up that process and
bring down the cost
of housing across the board. Auckland in New Zealand has been used as a
case study to support this view, but academic work by Cameron Murray
and Tim Helm in their paper
The Auckland myth: There is no evidence that upzoning increased housing construction
has questioned the earlier work.
Academics
also point out that developers have an interest in keeping property
prices and their margins high rather than flooding the market with
housing that brings down
property prices and dividends to their shareholders, so having land to
redevelop is not the only factor keeping prices high.
Social
housing advocates argue that focusing on providing more social and
affordable rental housing not only addresses the housing needs for those
who the market fails,
but it also takes the pressure off the lower end of the housing market
making it more affordable for others.
Underneath
this issue is a wider debate about the level of immigration putting
pressure on housing and the longer term need to have enough taxpayers in
a low birth rate
country to pay for an aging population. With immigration, dealing with
the post-Covid return of students and a catch-up from stalled migration,
it is easy for those opposed to change in their suburbs to target
immigration. After all, if Australia’s population
does not grow, there is no need to plan for that growth, but without
growth Australia then faces the long term problems of how to support an
aging population.
You
can get an idea of some of the issues in the NIMBY/YIMBY debate from
the 2023 video of Sydney University Henry Halloran Research Trust’s
Contested Housing: the great YIMBY vs NIMBY debate.
Source: REDWatch Email Update of 28 March 2024.