More housing eases prices and rents, allowing wages to catch up, and we need more in Kiama. Shortages are the worst poison on the cost of living:

 

 

Like Kiama, Mudgee has abundant land, and enjoys a Council with responsive housing supply, resulting in lots for $180k. 
Unlike Mudgee, Kiama council restricts the supply of land, so lots are $800k.

 

 

In Berry, undevelopable land like in flood zones or land zoned for agriculture just 200m from town sells for $50/sqm. But in town sells for $1200/sqm when zoned residential. People pay a premium for scarce rights to build, not land.

 

 

Council restrictions on home building impose extreme costs to future homebuyers, in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Council land banking and price gouging is much more extreme than woolies and Coles.

This is an oppression and wage enslavement of the young generation locked out of homeownership. It is a preference for the preservation of grass views from your periphery as you fang by in your bmw on the highway, rather than housing for human beings. There are millions of grass hills to go and see elsewhere, Kiama needs housing. Apparently, the grass is used to feed a handful of livestock, this should not be a choice over housing 1000 families. The alternative is landclearing - environmentalists tell us to build apartments, or use already cleared land for housing. Ironically, this up and coming nsw planner says grass is a dead, outdated 50s value. Older people in Kiama seem to want to protect grass for young people who dont want it?

 

 

I would rather let young people have somewhere well-located to live, near their own community they belong to and or their job. Do we want to rip communities apart, and let Kiama become another city with no grandchildren? Shellharbour is getting expensive too, do we want to impose huge commutes on our young people by putting them in new Appin/Wilton/Camden estates? Those places have no infrastructure, Kiama has plenty and taxes/contributions will go towards a few things that are needed like stormwater upgrades. 

Good planning is permitting homes where people want to live like Kiama as the NSW Productivity Commission tell us, not far away in cheap locations like Appin where constructions costs exceed the low willingness to pay, so we never see speedy housing supply. It must be permitted in expensive locations to have the greatest effect on housing affordability.

 

 

Even if older richer folks buy these homes (because new housing is always expensive) they free up their older, cheaper home for a young person or someone less wealthy. All and any additional housing works to create affordable housing, economists call this Downward Filtering. In Kiama, we see the opposite of Upward Filtering due to a lack of supply, whereby richer people move into older deteriorating structures that should be for lower income folk. And even better than that, Springside Hill have slated hundreds of homes to be Affordable Housing ie managed by the Housing Trust and rented out below market rate for vulnerable people.

Let’s support more home building like Springside Hill. The unused farmland should be for houses not horses. We will forward this to the state government's Planning Department and its minister Paul Scully MP, and Housing Minister Rose Jackson, to support this housing with an approval and infrastructure required.

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