Inner West to engage constructively in housing reforms

Thursday 8 February 2024

MEDIA RELEASE

INNER WEST MAYOR DARCY BYRNE

The housing supply crisis in Sydney is real and all councils have a responsibility to help solve it.

In the Inner West, we are carefully assessing the housing reforms the Government has put forward and will be seeking engagement and negotiation to address concerns we have.

We don’t believe these reforms can be rushed through, but we won’t be rejecting these rezonings outright, our intention is to be more constructive than that.

We agree in principle that increased density near transport hubs is a sensible way to provide more homes.

We’ll be seeking a more fine grained approach that makes use of the detailed planning Council has already done in these precincts.

We will be seeking a greater commitment to affordable housing on rezonings of private land and applaud the Government’s commitment to 30 per cent public housing on Government owned land.

We will also be putting forward a range of additional positive policy proposals for the Government to consider that can contribute to increasing supply.

The Inner West has already offered 10 of our public car parks and depots to the Government for conversion to public housing. Negotiations over this are progressing well.

We want all councils to play a positive role in addressing the housing supply crisis and want the Government to do more to give local government and local communities a seat at the table in this process.

For media enquiries please contact Jonny Browne, Jonny.Browne@innerwest.nsw.gov.au