After a year of supporting the Minns Government plans to deal with the so called housing crisis, Campbelltown Mayor George Greiss has launched a scathing attack on new housing targets released last week.
In a detailed critique contained in a Mayoral Minute for tonight’s Campbelltown Council meeting, Mayor Greiss has warned that traffic congestion and environmental impacts will be devastating unless the housing targets are matched with infrastructure spending.
Campbelltown’s dwelling target has increased from 7,100 – 8,250 dwellings for 2021-2026 to 10,500 dwellings for 2025-2029.
Annually, this amounts to going from 1,650 to 2,625 dwellings – a 59 per cent increase.
“This significant increase for Campbelltown, and potentially for Western Sydney if similar calculations apply, raises concerns,’’ says Mayor Greiss, pictured.
“The current infrastructure in Campbelltown already has significant backlogs.
“Increasing housing targets without addressing these backlogs will exacerbate existing problems.’’
Mayor Greiss says that without clear government support, the increased housing targets will never achieve their growth potential.
“Increasing the housing targets without parallel growth in local employment opportunities could lead to higher unemployment rates and economic strain on the community,’’ he says in the Mayoral Minute.
“We must have a solution to the employment deficit locally and a direct connection to Bradfield and the new Western Sydney Airport.
“Our public transport, especially train services, is already over capacity, and our area heavily relies on private vehicles.
“With the increase in housing, more residents will rely on these services, leading to further congestion and decreased quality of service.
“Water supply and infrastructure capacity are critical concerns.
With the increased housing targets, without an urgent upgrade to ensure adequate water supply, waste water treatment capacity and other infrastructure to support the new population, we cannot achieve these targets,’’ he says.
To encourage acceptance of this initiative, the NSW Government has announced a $200 million grant program designed to reward councils that successfully meet their housing targets and to fund the development of green spaces and the maintenance of local infrastructure.
However, Mayor Greiss points out that councils have no idea how this program would work in practice.
All they know is what was in the media release issued by the government.
“There was no consultation, they just announced the targets – I was not impressed,’’ he said.
While we all believe that our community needs more expenditure for infrastructure in such a rapidly growing city but the Mayor appears to have a bad memory of the fact that the Coalition has had some 11 year and four Premiers in power and did nothing to provide the infrastructure as developers made fortunes by pushing up land prices from around $10000 a lot to $570000 while reducing the sizes of lots from 600 sm to just 300 sm . This now means land now constitutes 60% of the cost of a home making it impossible to produce affordable homes even as far out as Wilton and Picton.