State Member for Euroa Annabelle Cleeland brought local stakeholders together to discuss housing shortages in the Seymour area on Friday, April 21.
The round-table discussion, held at Wine X Sam in Seymour, saw politicians, property developers, real estate agents and builders come together to discuss the lack of new housing to meet growing demand in and around the town.
The COVID-19 pandemic, a growing population and economic pressures have resulted in increased rental and property prices on the private market and an increased demand for social housing.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic the median value of a Seymour home has increased from $318,000 to $395,000, a rise of 25 per cent.
The meeting identified difficulties with the land acquisition and development process, as well as lengthy wait times with council planning applications and permits that hindered private housing developments.
Approximately 67,000 Victorians were on the public housing wait list as of December 2022. New applications account for about 57,700 of these, while almost 9500 people are living in homes with transfer applications in progress.
Ms Cleeland said waiting times for those on that list had blown out and the state government was continuing to mismanage Victoria’s public housing system.
“Right across the Hume region we have a waitlist for housing completely out of control,” she said.
“I am regularly contacted by people in desperate need of housing and they are continually being told there is simply no supply to house them.”
Ms Cleeland was joined by shadow home ownership and housing affordability minister Jess Wilson, who heard from participants about the difficulty of building affordable housing when faced with constant delays in the system.
“What’s very clear is that you can’t have a one size fits all policy about housing availability, we need to look at the local pressures,” Ms Wilson said.
Stosius & Staff construction company director Peter Stosius said a shortage of town planning personnel within councils was not unique to Seymour.
He said that across the state delays in the planning process made the acquisition of land for housing an unattractive business prospect.
“We are trying to do our best but it becomes such a lengthy process that it doesn’t work out economically if you have to wait three or four years before you can sell the land that you bought and subdivided,” he said.
“We’ve subdivided 100 blocks on one side of Seymour and it’s taken five years.
“The bureaucracy is holding up everyone. Really the system must be streamlined and modified.”
He believes that with adequate staff, the land could be on the market within a year.
A state government spokesperson said the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build would create 12,000 homes for vulnerable Victorians, including a $1.25 billion investment in regional Victoria.
Since the program’s inception more than 7600 homes have been completed or are under way, including 1776 new social homes since June 2022.
“This includes a minimum investment guarantee of $25 million for the Mitchell local government area, which has already been exceeded. To date, $34 million has been invested in Mitchell to create 87 new homes,” the spokesperson said.
“The last time the Liberals were in government they cut hundreds of millions of dollars from housing and homelessness services and now their federal colleagues are blocking billions of dollars of investment in new social and affordable housing across the country, including Victoria.”