What we are seeking
- Mechanisms to ensure future housing needs are achieved in balance with good design standards.
- Community voice restored to planning decision-making.
- An increase in social housing to ensure supply does not fall below 4.3% of our total housing stock.
- Mandates for a minimum affordable housing contribution to be included in all significant new developments.
Key facts
Major changes to planning regulations in Victoria have been introduced to deliver the Government’s housing targets. The reforms aim to significantly boost the supply of housing by:
- reducing development restrictions
- reducing opportunities for community input to planning decisions
- reducing the breadth of assessment conducted for housing proposals
- reducing scope for councils to prepare residential development and activity centre planning policy.
What you can do
You can contact a member of parliament to raise concern and ask for action on this issue.
Lower house
Upper house
Overview and background
While we support the Victorian Government’s population growth targets and the need for more diverse housing choice, we are advocating for higher quality design standards to deliver better neighbourhood outcomes.
We agree with the Government's intent to improve housing affordability in appropriate locations, but we have concerns about the recent call-in of several planning applications that have effectively taking decision-making out of our hands. The decisions are now made by the Minister for Planning.
Although we recognise the need to increase the supply and diversity of well-designed housing to meet community needs, we are concerned about the:
- lack of consultation with councils and communities in preparing the reforms, particularly the Planning Amendment (Better Decisions Made Faster) Bill
- loss of our decision-making, through streamlined approval processes and an increase in opportunities for applications to be ‘called-in’ by the Minister for Planning
- restricting of our ability to align local planning with community priorities, such as retaining and promoting a 30% tree canopy and protecting neighbourhood character.
Housing affordability crisis
Rising property prices and rents have created a housing affordability crisis in Australia. 2021 Census data for Banyule indicates there are no dwellings affordable to purchase by very low-income earners or for a single adult on a low income. There are just 2,296 social housing dwellings in Banyule, about 4.3% of total dwellings.
Housing stress
Housing stress is widespread with 63% of households having mortgage payments of more than 30% of total household income.
Similarly, rental stress is being experienced by 45% of households with rental payments of more than 30 per of household incomes. This has increased drastically since 2021 where only 13% of households with a mortgage and 28% of rental households were potentially in housing stress.
Government response
The State and Federal Government have responded to the housing crisis with new housing policies.
- Victoria’s Housing Statement, released in late 2023, sets a bold target to build 800,000 homes in Victoria by 2034. This will focus denser residential development around within Melbourne’s established suburbs and an increase in social housing.
- The National Housing Accord has a commitment from all Commonwealth, States and Territories to deliver 1.2 million new, well-located homes over 5 years.
We recognise that tackling housing affordability requires the involvement of all tiers of government. With the soaring cost of housing, developers stand to make significant profits from higher density residential developments.
We are advocating for a mandated requirement that all significant developments include a percentage of affordable housing to ensure a more equitable outcome for our communities.