A few crumbs to low-to-moderate income earners is bad planning

The Minns government’s redevelopment of Glebe Island into a new suburb of 7000 to 8500 homes is a rare opportunity to get serious about providing affordable accommodation for essential workers near Sydney’s CBD.

But slating just 10 per cent as affordable housing – the small proportion of new homes to be offered at below-market rent to nurses, teachers, paramedics, firefighters and police – will do little to address Sydney’s debilitating housing problem.

While employment still tends to cluster around CBDs, the emptying of the once-dormitory inner-city suburbs compels workers to long and costly commutes, their loads made heavier by the difficulty of finding childcare. Further, with many empty-nesters staying put as their children leave home, sometimes to greenfield suburbs, the population crush is coming down heaviest on western Sydney and it is skewing housing resources.

But Bays West is Sydney’s future and, if handled properly, tolls an end to our habit of relegating growth to a few areas on the fringes.

Bulk port operations will be shifted from the industrial site by 2030, and redevelopment of the renamed Bays West precinct could eventually bring high-rise towers – some reportedly 40 storeys tall – with $2 million-plus price tags for apartments clustered around a new metro station due to open in 2032.

The multimillion-dollar price tags make a mockery of transferring publicly owned land while throwing a few crumbs to low-to-moderate income earners.

Affordable housing typically goes for 80 per cent of the market rate, or slightly less for tax-advantaged not-for-profit community housing. Even then, the towering price or rent is surely too high.

In late 2023 Premier Chris Minns unveiled his signature policy, a rezoning shake-up that dramatically increased density, especially around transport hubs, to create capacity for a claimed 170,000 new homes.

NSW Labor had previously committed to ensuring developments on surplus public land would include a minimum of 30 per cent of social and affordable housing. But Premier Chris Minns now says prescribing only 10 per cent of homes for affordable housing at Bays West would allow the government to reinvest returns from the site into public use, including parks and nightlife. “We need to get the yields in to make it special,” he said.

The chief executive of the Committee for Sydney, Eamon Waterford, said the publicly owned land represented a “once-in-a-century opportunity to set a benchmark for a fairer Sydney”, by creating a waterfront suburb for residents of all incomes. “Comparable sites in London mandate 50 per cent affordable housing – more ambitious targets for affordable housing would help ensure the people who keep our city running can live in or near the communities they serve.”

There are ways the Minns government can expand limits on social housing. Such accommodation for key workers makes good and rational business sense: 850 new apartments in Bays West is nowhere near enough for a Sydney that needs their services.

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