BY JAMES CARTER
The Newcastle Greens have announced a commitment to create a 15% affordable housing levy on infill developments in the high density and catalyst areas of the city.
Initially raised in February 2019 in, the Greens have highlighted the idea in a pre-election pitch.
Greens Councillor and Lord Mayoral candidate John Mackenzie put forward a motion in March 2019 where council agreed to establish an affordable housing levy scheme, but it is still yet to be implemented.
A local housing strategy was released last year but an affordable housing scheme is yet to be implemented.
Councillor Mackenzie says the current housing crisis means the affordability scheme needs to be fast tracked.
"Rental accommodation is almost completely gone and homelessness services in the city are saying this is the worst they have ever seen and are having to make more turn backs than ever before."
Newcastle is set to lose 226 rental properties which have been subsidised under the National Rental Affordability Scheme over the next six years according to a NRAS report.
The federal program was discontinued by the Abbot government in 2014 aimed to increase medium to large scale investment in affordable housing.
The intention was to have affordable housing stock continually added so that as the 10 year contracts expired there would be additional houses built to replace them.
The proposed levy would be 15% on privately owned properties and 30% on government developments such as the Hunter Park development.
"It would apply to those areas where we are seeing large scale urban renewal growth in particular the CBD, Wickham, Adamstown and Newcastle West"
"In those sorts of areas where we are seeing large scale developments in high density areas but we are not seeing a comparative amount of affordable or social housing being put in at the same time," Cr Mackenzie said.
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| Affordable Housing in Newcastle Image: Google Maps |
