Sydney’s Inner West Council has voted in favour of re-zoning a series of council owned properties to develop 31,000 new apartments in a huge boost to housing availability. The Inner West Council is one of Sydney’s biggest LGA’s, covering 35 square kilometres and including densely populated suburbs like Marrickville, Leichhardt, Balmain and Camperdown. The new developments will add to the already 85,000 dwellings and increase housing density along major thoroughfares like Parramatta Road.

The vote took place in a marathon meeting at Ashfield Town Hall, and won by only one vote in an 8-7 split. The vote was part of the Council’s Fairer Future Plan, which aims to tackle housing shortages in suburbs like Marrickville by redistributing zoning to replace blocks of land fit for single dwellings with apartment blocks. These blocks will mostly be six to 11 storeys tall, but there are some plans to develop buildings up to 22 storeys high. The plan has come in conjunction with the NSW State government’s project to redevelop further stretches of Parramatta Rd with an additional 8000 homes between Camperdown and Leichhardt. Both initiatives have focus on the existing public transport routes through the areas, with the Parramatta Rd redevelopments nearby the Inner West’s light rail line and further plans centring around the stations in Marrickville, Dulwich Hill and Ashfield.

‘This is about planning not just for today, but for the people who will call [the area] home into the future,’ said Councillor Mat Howard, whose ward centres around Marrickville. ‘The plan delivers much needed housing while protecting the things we love about our suburb. 

The council is also replicating a City of Sydney Council scheme that requires all residential developments built on private land to incorporate 2 to 3 per cent affordable housing. This is on top of the council choosing to re-develop a series of council car parks into social housing and the council allowing churches and other faith-based organisations to redevelop their land with dwellings on the condition that 30% of the developments comprise of social housing, too. The time frame included in the proposal was fifteen years, and councillors hope that now it has been approved, work can begin as soon as next year.

Inner West Mayor Darcy Byrne said he wanted to prevent the exodus of young people, renters as well as essential workers like nurses and teachers from the LGA. He said ‘now is the time to act, we can’t wait any longer’ and ‘if you don’t act now to increase the supply of housing, then the already obscene level of inequity in our local community will get worse.’

This vote comes soon after the Federal Government’s introduction of 5% deposits for first home buyers. The combination of the two schemes will result in more homes and more buyers in the already competitive Inner West market.

To learn more about the scheme, check out the Inner West Council’s fact sheets.