Yimbies welcome Labor’s plan for more housing in Melbourne and Geelong but question priorities

Residential housing under construction in Melbourne. A 27-year strategy for Victoria assigns development targets to local councils. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP

Housing advocates and council representatives have responded with cautious optimism to a new 27-year housing strategy for Victoria that assigns development targets to local councils, but called for more detail on how it will roll out.

On Sunday the Labor premier, Jacinta Allan, and the planning minister, Sonya Kilkenny, revealed draft housing targets for all local government areas in the state, with Melbourne’s central business district, its outer suburbs and the regional city of Geelong proposed to bear the brunt of development over the next three decades.

The government said the proposal could lead to the construction of 2.5m new homes by 2051.

The advocacy organisation Yimby Melbourne broadly welcomed the target strategy but its lead organiser, Jonathan O’Brien, said the nearly 30-year timeline was an exercise in “reading the sweet tea leaves” and the public would be better served by targets that responded directly to known land and home prices.

Yimby Melbourne released a report in April recommending the introduction of enforceable housing targets for the 19 LGAs in inner Melbourne, taking into account demand, house and rent prices, development costs and proximity to amenities.

While the government’s modelling for those 19 LGAs matched Yimby Melbourne’s in terms of a target of 40,000 total dwellings, it differed markedly in its distribution, to the extent that O’Brien said the government’s targets were “entrenching inequity across the west and the east again”.

He warned that western councils including Maribyrnong and Brimbank had been set “very high targets that they’re going to really struggle to deliver because the underlying demand isn’t there”.

“And then even though Boorondara’s target [of 67,000 new dwellings] seems high, you’re actually letting them off relatively easy, because the demand is there, and they could actually build a whole lot more,” he said.

O’Brien called for the government to release its methodology in determining the targets so that the underlying assumptions could be tested.

Speaking on Sunday, Allan did not rule out penalties for councils that didn’t reach their targets, saying the drafts were “the start of a discussion” with them.

“If there are some councils who don’t support the construction of new homes, in their local areas, then we as a state government will do that work for them,” Allan said.

Cr David Clark, president of the Municipal Association of Victoria, said a punitive approach to enforcement would be practically very difficult “versus the option of actually being proactive and actually supporting councils” to build more liveable ecosystems outside the main metropolitan areas.

“We really want to work with the government to get that stuff right, that makes these places livable and affordable, and then justifies the densification because people want to live there, and actually make some development happen in that context,” Clark said.

Part the challenge was creating a “culture shift” towards more dense housing that included open spaces, services, employment and recreation opportunities in local areas.

The shadow minister for planning, the Liberals’ James Newbury, said on Sunday that the proposal was an attempt by the Labor government to begin “centralising planning” in a way that would “take away the rights of local communities to have a say in what’s being built in their streets”.

But O’Brien and Clark both separately said they believed targets could give the public greater control over the growth of their communities, if implemented properly.

“Setting housing targets actually gives local communities more say rather than the inverse,” O’Brien said. “It says to local communities, hey, there needs to be housing here. If there needs to be this much housing, where do you think it should be?”

Clark said it was incumbent on the government to make it clear how the consultation processes would work.

“It’s really critical that we just don’t end up with 79 targets for 79 councils and no more information than that, because that just doesn’t help anybody,” he said.