While housing politics is often fraught, in the progressive-minded ACT, there's one thing that seemingly everyone can agree on: we need more social housing.
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The current situation is dire. For those in the priority category, wait times for social housing average 256 days. For those categorised as high needs, wait times are 1207 days.
As rents around the territory continue to rise, more strain will be placed on our stock of social housing.
Fortunately, over the past few years, both the ACT and Commonwealth governments have provided funding for a range of social housing programs, from the Commonwealth's Social Housing Accelerator, to the ACT's Renewing Public Housing program.
However, despite this influx of funding, actually building new homes remains difficult.
There is serious concern from housing providers, advocacy groups and the ACT government that the 1200 social and affordable homes over five years to be funded under the Housing Australia Future Fund may not be delivered on time.
And despite receiving around $50 million under the Social Housing Accelerator payment, the ACT will only be delivering around 50 new social homes, with more than half of these being purchased off the private market.
So what is standing in the way of our government building the public housing the ACT needs? Ironically, it's the government's own planning laws.
To understand why, first understand that most new social housing is built as part of multi-unit infill projects, so as to minimise land purchases and ensure an even distribution across the inner city.
However, the ACT government's recently updated territory plan still locks up over 80 per cent of residential land in the RZ1 zone, which strictly limits multi-unit development.
While an exemption for multi-unit supportive housing projects on RZ1 blocks exists, these projects are so weighed down by parking, set-back, and design requirements, that it's extremely difficult to build additional homes.
The result is that government and community housing groups own very little land where it's legal to build ambitious multi-unit social housing projects, and have to pay through the nose in order to purchase blocks where it is.
Once correctly zoned land has been found, and the months-long development application process has been completed, there's still the very real risk that any approval is appealed in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal (ACAT) by angry community groups.
Just recently, an ACT government proposal in Griffith was the subject of opposition by the Griffith Narrabundah Residents Association, with the result that the proposed three social housing units (on a 1200 metre square block no less), has now been downsized to just two units.
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For many projects, the threat alone of legal challenges is enough to reduce their ambition.
The huge costs involved in confronting NIMBY litigation often forces governments and architects to just reduce the amount of social housing built.
It is tempting for the ACT government to blame NIMBYism for these issues. But it's the ACT government itself who has legislated to hold back mid-density social housing through byzantine planning rules, and to allow wealthy community groups to leverage this complexity to block projects with nuisance lawsuits.
The positive news is: there's still time for change. Making all social housing projects in the ACT Territory Priority Projects to ensure their approvals cannot be subject to dubious merits review lawsuits would be a good start.
So would changing zoning rules to allow modest multi-unit housing to be built on any block in the ACT, similar to existing RZ2 rules.
As we turn their minds toward the 2024 election, let's hope these kinds of commitments are part of the party's policy platforms. Because in a housing crisis, it really shouldn't be this hard to build social housing.
- Edward Smyth is treasurer of Greater Canberra, a community group advocating for reforms to the ACT planning system to create a more affordable and sustainable Canberra.