Albury endorses housing strategy

AlburyCity Council endorsed a new local housing strategy at its Council Meeting last night.

Council says that in the past five years, the LGA’s population has grown significantly, and housing affordability and diversity has become a more prominent local issue.

The Albury Local Housing Strategy provides a robust plan for how and where housing is delivered to solve these issues, and meet the needs of the community now and in years to come, it said in a statement.

Mayor, Kylie King said the Strategy focuses on advocating to and working with other levels of government, creating partnerships with local housing providers, and reviewing local planning controls.

“Our community has told us they want more affordable and diverse housing across our city, so we will continue to work with Goverment to ensure Albury is getting its fair share of resources, review planning controls to minimise constraints and provide incentives for development, and support housing providers to enable them to deliver the housing we desperately need,” Mayor King said.

In developing the Local Housing Strategy, an intensive background analysis of Albury’s current housing market explored things such as population growth and demographics, changing lifestyles and consumer desires, property types, rental prices and property values, and available affordable and social housing.

Close consultation with the local community, as well as key government, development industry and community organisations, through polls and surveys, drop-in sessions, phone interviews, and industry forums was a key component in developing the Strategy, the Council said.

The most common issues raised through consultation included:

• Supply: Ensuring facilities and community infrastructure keeps pace with new housing developments, with preferences for a variety of housing types to meet the needs of both families and smaller households.
• Diversity: A wider housing mix espscially medium density options like townhouses and duplexes to provide more affordable options for smaller and lower income households.
• Affordability: Support for more social and affordable housing, as well as disability housing, seniors and aged care housing, student housing and migrant housing.
• Resilience: An increased focus on the environmental sustainability of housing and ensuring it is more resilient to the impacts of a changing climate.

The Albury Local Housing Strategy can be viewed on the AlburyCity website.