The Inner West Council voted, by one vote, for Labor councillors’ pro-developer Fairer Futures Plan on September 30. Seven councillors, including five Greens, one Liberal and one Independent voted against.
There is significant opposition from residents in the Inner West to the plan for 31,000 new high-rise dwellings over 15 years with just 3% allocated to “affordable housing”.
Residents held a rally outside and then packed into the meeting room. YIMBY Sydney supporters also came to support the plan.
Speakers at the Better Futures Coalition (BFC) rally outside condemned the “sham” consultation process and called for better and real community consultation. They said, despite Labor’s attempt to sell the plan as providing housing for all, it does not improve housing affordability. They called for a redraft with real public housing, more green space and better amenities.
BFC activist and former Leichhardt Green councillor Hall Greenland said Labor councillors were “drunk on their own rhetoric”. “To hear them talk feverishly of their own ‘courage’, ‘far-sightedness’ and commitment to social justice, as they passed a developers plan to massively increase dwelling numbers in the Inner West to ‘solve the housing crisis’, was to briefly exist in another dimension beyond reality,” he said.
In a sop to the widespread concern about what “affordable housing” means, Labor said its plan would offer tax exemptions and height bonuses to churches, in exchange for 30% affordable housing. It also promised 300 affordable housing units on council car parks.
However, set at 80% of market rates, so-called affordable housing is not affordable for most people. The plan does not include new green space or playing fields. It will involve extensive demolitions and displacements impacting biodiversity and urban heat.
An amendment by Midjuburi/Marrickville Ward Labor councillor Matt Howard to scale back, by 20%, development in Marrickville was voted up, excluding areas which were more than 800 metres from train stations. But this 20% was shifted to redevelopment targets around Parramatta Road, particularly in Leichhardt.
Greens councillor Izabella Antoniou said Labor had “gifted millions to developers” and missed an opportunity to “build genuinely affordable homes in the middle of a housing crisis”.
Greens councillor Olivia Barlow said “housing supply won’t magically solve the affordability crisis” and called for a “needs-based approach to planning”.
The ABC reported that the IWC will pocket $520 million in development contributions from the plan.
Action for Public Housing activist Rachel Evans said the plan will “do nothing to reduce rents or house prices”, adding that rents will only be reduced with “beautiful public housing” and council cooperative housing.
