Sydney faces a severe housing crisis, with an exploding population projected to reach 6.3 million by 2041. This article delves into controversial yet potentially effective solutions to address this challenge, ranging from repurposing cemeteries and defence land to exploring the role of religious institutions and short-term rental regulations in creating more affordable housing options.
Exploring the big and bold ideas of Gen Z leaders to address Sydney ’s housing crisis - before it’s too late. Already crippled by an unaffordable housing market, Sydney is expected to balloon to 6.3 million residents by 2041, and drastic measures may be necessary to accommodate a growing population. As the city prepares to house an additional 1.
4 million people, controversial solutions that have been floated or historically implemented may unlock large swaths of potential housing throughout Sydney. But what are these contentious ideas?\While interfering with final resting places may seem taboo, the practice has been integral to the formation of major cities around the world. In Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, bodies have been exhumed to make way for housing, roads and parks. Sydney’s Central Station, Town Hall and Camperdown Memorial Rest Park are all built on exhumed graves and former cemeteries, as are Melbourne’s Queen Victoria Market and Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium. While removing burial sites to build housing may make some distasteful, turning cemeteries into parks could allow for the upzoning of surrounding areas and the introduction of higher-density living. One example is the popular Sydney Park, which was built on a former burial ground.\Sydney has a number of large cemeteries in prime locations, including Waverley Cemetery on the cliffs at Bronte, Macquarie Park Cemetery and Crematorium adjacent to transport hubs and facilities and Rookwood Cemetery in the western suburbs. The defence force is the largest Commonwealth landowner. It has more than 1000 owned and leased properties. Plans to sell off parts of its sprawling portfolio to boost housing supply are on the table. Last year, the HMAS Kuttabul at Potts Point are among the hundreds of properties that have been eyed for sale. However, beyond what has been proposed, there are large tracts of Defence land that could become prime residential areas if military sites were relocated to more spacious areas. If sold to developers for residential or commercial use, Defence’s portfolio could have a resale value of as high as $68 billion, the Australian National Audit Office estimates, and could clear the way for large housing developments.\If underutilised and increasingly unpopular facilities were converted into housing, thousands of dwellings could be added in already established areas. Royal Sydney Golf Club in Rose Bay is one of the country’s private members’ clubs. Its joining fee is about $30,000. Maroubra’s Anzac rifle range, which holds a large chunk of headland real estate, is regularly open just eight days a month. Glebe’s Wentworth Park racetrack, the home of an increasingly unpopular sport within the greyhound-adoption-friendly inner west, could also undergo the Rosehill treatment, which capture a gargantuan share of land for a sport that less than 5 per cent of the population plays. The conversion of parts of these sites to public parkland or aged care facilities, as seen at Moore Park and Chatswood Golf Course (the latter is currently closed to convert half its course into 106 seniors living apartments) could allow for increased housing accessibility, and may even bring more players to the sport.\The tax concessions, underutilised land and declining membership of religious communities throughout the country have ignited debate on how they could shoulder the growing needs for more housing. Up to 20,000 new homes could be built in some of Sydney’s most desirable locations if zoning obstructions that prevent most housing tenures – including affordable housing, serviced apartments, student housing and social housing – from being built on places of worship were removed. About one-third of the almost 2500 parcels of land occupied by places of worship in NSW are within 800 metres of a railway station, and plans to fill gaps in the housing market are under way, as and signing up to the federal government’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund to build homes for those in need.\Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb were once lauded as the future of tourism but in recent years, they’ve developed a bad reputation for taking rental stock out of the market. There are about 80,000 short-term rental listings in Sydney. A report commissioned by Airbnb found that in 2022, short-term rentals constituted over 2 per cent of housing stock in NSW. That number has been found to be higher in some areas, with estimates suggesting that up to 10 per cent of available housing in certain inner-city suburbs is being used for short-term rentals. In Sydney, properties can be rented for 180 days a year and stays of more than 21 consecutive days are not counted towards that total. In other cities, such as London and Berlin, the cap is half that, and in Amsterdam, the cap is 30 days. Other cities such as Barcelona are working to phase out short-term rentals altogether.
HOUSING CRISIS SYDNEY AFFORDABLE HOUSING ZONING CEMETERIES DEFENSE LAND SHORT TERM RENTALS AIRBNB RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS
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