Two hundred people joined a spirited protest outside the Inner West Council’s (IWC) extraordinary meeting on September 22, demanding it scrap its pro-developer Fairer Futures plan. It was organised by Better Future Coalition (BFC).
Only 120 people could enter the allocated small meeting space, but many stayed in “overflow” rooms. The meeting lasted five hours, with around two-thirds of all contributors in favor of the developer-friendly plan, in what seemed to be an organised effort on the part of the Labor majority in council.
The misnamed plan involves the private development of 31,000 apartments, with just 2% rising to 3% of all new homes being “affordable”.
After it became public in May, resident groups in almost all of affected suburbs of Marrickville, Leichhardt, Petersham, Ashfield and Dulwich Hill formed the BFC and it, alongside Action for Public Housing (AfPH), are calling for the plan to be scrapped.
Residents from across the inner west and resident action groups, such as Save Dully, Save Marrickville, Save Callan Park, Labor for Ending Homelessness, Socialist Alliance, members of the Greens and NSW Socialists, are involved in the BFC.
The NSW Nurses and Midwives Association, Sydney Yimby and the Property Council NSW support the IWC’s plan.
IWC asked for feedback and received a record 3000 submissions, mostly oppositional.
The Save Dully Hill group pointed out the council’s plan could increase dwellings by 4425 — a rise of 68%. It would include a tiny amount of green space, the high rises would block sunlight for others and they would eradicate Dulwich Hill’s biodiversity corridor.
It said the IWC’s claim to support diversity is hollow, pointing out that only a fraction of the new homes are “affordable”. It also criticised the apartment allocation for being weighted towards the poorer suburbs. For example, Marrickville has been allocated 9390; Dulwich Hill, 4245; Leichhardt, 4887; Ashfield, 7682; and Lewisham-Petersham, 1794.
Balmain, Birchgrove, Lilyfield, Roselle, Annandale and Haberfield escaped the high rise allocation, as did the densely populated suburbs of Tempe or Newtown.
In addition, the IWC and NSW Labor decided on September 14 to rezone parts of Parramatta Road to allow for an additional 7000-8000 dwellings, the bulk of these slated for Leichhardt.
Right now, a two-bedroom rental apartment in Marrickville costs between $700-900 a week. Two bedroom apartments are selling for between $700,000–$1.5 million.
“Affordable” housing rent is capped at 80% of market rent, which means an “affordable” Marrickville apartment would be around $540 a week. When you consider that a single mum on a Centrelink benefit receives around $700 a week, this is not affordable.
A report by Homelessness Australia and the University of NSW released last year found nearly two thirds of local government areas reported homelessness having “significantly increased” since 2019-20, with agencies reporting the number of “newly homeless persons” they assisted over 2023-24 rising to more than 10,000 a month.
A genuine community consultation meeting, organised by BFC in late July, attracted more than 300 people who gathered to discuss their concerns about Labor's plan. However, following that meeting, Greens councillors Andrew Blake and Isabella Antoniou moved to amend Labor’s plan at the August council meeting, provided it lift its affordable housing component to 20%. Labor voted against that.
BFC and AfPH are calling on all the Inner West councillors to vote against Labor’s developer-friendly plan and for the IWC to begin a real community consultation.
[Action for Public Housing has called a protest on September 30 at 5.30pm before the IWC’s meeting on its housing plan. Rachel Evans is active in Action for Public Housing and is a member of Socialist Alliance.]