MISDIRECTED and misinformed is how Orange's Greens councillor David Mallard described the NSW Government's announcement of $500 million to 'supercharge housing supply'.
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Cr Mallard, who ran on a platform of affordable housing for his first term on Orange City Council, said the funding was directed at home-ownership and would therefore benefit developers.
"The issue is parts of it are really misdirected in terms of what they think the problems are with housing," Cr Mallard said.
"It's all directed at home-ownership and doesn't have anything that helps with delivering more social and affordable housing for people who can't make it in the market.
"Or with fixing renters' rights and making it better for people to rent."
Premier Dominic Perrottet said one of the biggest constraints on housing supply is a lack of supporting infrastructure like water, roads, sewers and parks and $300m has been pledge to enable 'shovel-ready. projects across Sydney and key regional areas.
But Cr Mallard was unconvinced Orange would benefit.
"The funding that's in there for infrastructure, obviously that helps build footpaths and parks and everything and that's potentially helpful in terms have having good communities.
"But a lot of the money in it is about the idea that you need to streamline rezoning or approvals, that it's all about delays.
"That's really buying into the developers' idea that if only we got red tape out of the way they'd be building loads more ... Developers have an interest in keeping property prices where they are.
"They're not going to roll out a bunch more because they don't want to flood the market with housing supply. That's why we need solutions that don't just leave it to developers and assume they'll fix things."
Cr Mallard said the cash injection didn't address homelessness.
"We've got a very broad housing crisis and [the housing funding] is only going at some parts of it and it's missing the mark on some of those parts as well."
It's estimated seven million Australians live in rental properties, which make up 30 per cent of Australia's 10.7 million dwelllings. Only 3 per cent of those rental properties are owned by the government.
"We need that investment from governments introducing the stock, working with community housing organisations and local governments need to play a roll in that as well," Cr Mallard said.
"[Orange] has got lots of land that's zoned and ready for development but it only happens at a certain pace ... some of the experts have made it clear at the [National Government Assembly] conference - it's not about councils being a roadblock and planning approvals aren't the problem.
"So the things the state government are going to throw at it aren't going to be the fix."
The fund also announced $33.8 million to address housing supply in Regional NSW and create a 10-year regional housing supply pipeline that will make housing and infrastructure delivery more certain, and $3.8 million for 'call-in' team for accelerated council led rezonings.
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Kate Bowyer
Kate Bowyer is a senior reporter at the Central Western Daily.
Kate Bowyer is a senior reporter at the Central Western Daily.
