Low and Mid-Rise policy

How our cities will grow as they grow - NIMBY vs YIMBY.

Last week, the NSW government released its long-awaited "missing middle" low and mid-rise housing policy to unlock land for the next wave of buildings in NSW.

Significant planning changes like these are highly emotional. Everyone has an opinion, but Sydney has a vast social problem at a city level right now, and housing affordability for current and future generations must be at the top of the list.

Recently, property price resilience has surprised almost everyone. As mortgages have become more challenging for current homeowners, they have become just as difficult for new buyers trying to buy. Instead of going down under rate rises from 0.1% to 4.35% and a 30%+ drop in borrowing capacity, prices rose.

Like many cities worldwide, the ability to obtain home security, along with compelling work prospects and an inspiring day-to-day lifestyle, will drive the desire to move or live in a city anywhere in the world.

Unless you can get all three, a city will struggle to grow sustainably in the long term.

Suppose Sydney doesn't deal with the challenge of widely offering the ability to own, rent, and secure a long-term, suitable living option. In that case, Sydney will continue to lose our talent and the key workers on which Sydney's economy runs.

We must act, as Sydney will inevitably grow, and today's problems will only get worse tomorrow.

While there is always a lot more to think about, these reforms are a step in finally taking action towards unlocking more housing options for families, but in themselves, they don't mean a solution.

Properties will only be built when they can comfortably profit, and in the current market, these do not make sense for developers at current prices because the cost to build is too high after recent price increases.

Many new challenges will unfold as Sydney tries to catch up by building more property options across all levels: singles, families, younger, older, affordable, luxury, and aged care.

And to be clear, there is much more to think about than just building buildings to densify our city - schools, greenspaces, roads, cars, transport capacity, water, electricity, sewage, waste, hospitals, parking, pollution, trees, design standards, building capacity...the list goes on.

I want to congratulate Chris Minns on being brave enough to take action, but his action alone won't solve this, and society needs to get on board with coming up with solutions rather than the status quo.