The New South Wales government’s budget on Tuesday underscored Landcom’s reinstatement as a developer to assist with aspirational targets that will help to reverse the housing crisis. The key is that it is now unshackled from its former constraints imposed by the former government to prepare land and master plans for sale to the private sector.
Landcom is back in the development game after the New South Wales government last year allocated it additional powers to help with the housing crisis.
The most recent announcement was a $450 million investment for the state development agency to build more than 400 dwellings for essential workers such as nurses, paramedics, teachers and firefighters close to where they live.
The agency plans to identify four sites over the next three years with a preference for surplus government land.
“A portion of this funding will go towards land acquisitions, and then the remainder will see through the construction of up to four sites,” the agency said on its website.
Premier of New South Wales Chris Minns said the state would “grind to a halt without nurses, paramedics, teachers, police officers and firefighters, but many can’t afford a place to live in Sydney, close to where they work. This has to change.
“We’re pulling every leaver we have to tackle the housing crisis, and one of the best ways to make rentals more affordable is to build more homes.”
Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, who handed down the state budget on Tuesday, said NSW was “in the grip of a housing crisis, this is a must-have policy.”
The state budget included $5 million to continue the audit of surplus state government land owned by Building Homes for NSW – with Homes NSW and Landcom to take up the delivery of 30,000 new homes in partnership.
Regional and rural developments
Meanwhile, the agency continues to expand its build-to-rent programs up the north and south coasts of NSW, which are part of its new extended responsibilities.
The budget also included $5 million for Landcom to deliver 10 additional build-to-rent dwellings in Bomaderry, with 60 homes already in development under the government’s previous $35 million investment.
Landcom also has a new build-to-rent project in flood affected Lismore in the state’s Northern Rivers on a 4500 square metre site to be acquired from Southern Cross University. It will deliver 50 new rental homes, with 20 per cent set aside for affordable housing
At Orange, west of Sydney, the agency is partnering on a 25-hectare precinct on the regional city’s eastern outskirts, Redmond Place.
The estate will deliver 300 homes, 20 per cent designated as affordable housing.
“Landcom has an ambitious agenda to get shovels in the ground and more people into homes – to make a real difference in NSW,” said Landcom chief executive Alexander Wendler who was appointed to the role in May 2022 and was previously chief development officer at Transport for NSW.
“This project will build hundreds of homes in Orange while we continue to work with Councils and other partners to find more sites to do even more across the state.”
Minns government’s first budget
A centrepiece of the Minns Labor government’s first budget last year was a $2.2 billion housing package, of which $300 million was allocated to Landcom to build 4700 homes, with 30 per cent to be affordable.
The remaining $1.9 billion was to be invested in upgrading roads, sewers, parks and transport links to make new suburbs more liveable and easier to develop, the government said.
NSW’s Hills Shire Council was part of a call to encourage the government to enable Landcom to once again build more housing rather than focus on urban master planning for private developers to take over – a feature of the previous Liberal government’s policy that had bowed to pressure from the private development sector to stop Landcom “competing” with it for work.
The council’s general manager Michael Edgar in August last year told the state government he was alarmed at empty public land around Bella Vista and Kellyville metro station, despite the area being rezoned for 8400 homes in 2017 and that the agency should once again build homes.
Planning minister Paul Scully said at the time that Landcom “have got a job to do, and it’s not in competition with the private sector, but it’s being the government’s development arm. The private sector alone, the public sector alone, won’t solve the issue we’ve got.”
Landcom was also given powers by the current state government to “self-approve” proposals for affordable housing projects up to 75 dwellings, as well as access state significant approval pathways for large projects, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
However, Urban Development Institute of Australia NSW chief executive Steve Mann told the AFR that while he supported the change, the “4700 figure was a drop in the ocean” when it came to meeting its housing target under the national housing accord, which was 376,000 homes at the time, according to Planning Minister Paul Scully.
This meant NSW needed to build 75,000 homes annually, but the state was only on track to build around 47,000 homes yearly.
The NSW government confirmed Landcom’s new role to take up an important role in housing