Neither should be prioritised.
Roughly 56,000 homes were built in the year to June, 10% below the prior decade average. Against a target of 80,000.
Meanwhile rents continue to climb, hitting a record $600 a week.
Victorian Labor’s answer is 60 activity centres: up to 20 storeys towers around stations, and a claimed 300,000 homes – a fanciful claim with zero chance of being achieved. They talk a big game on greenfields and other typologies, but the delivery has been poor.
The Liberal Party of Australia (Victorian Division)’s answer: scrap activity centres, fast-track greenfields, widen the CBD zone. Not enough clarity on housing targets or which planning reforms will be retained.
Both sides are selling their version of #headlinedevelopment: direction announced, without any specifics on how they will achieve the goal of actually delivering more homes.
Housing and planning policy needs a simple filter: can homes be built that are within the price a household can actually pay? If the answer is no, it’s a waste of time.
The solution: Townhouses where they stack up;, towers where they stack up, land estates where they stack up. The form of dwelling follows #feasibility and the price point, never the reverse.
When the Activity Centre program was announced it was abundantly clear that the attempt at hype would not deliver homes young people could actually afford. First home buyers aren’t buying apartments in Brighton or Kew, and developers aren’t building apartments in lower grade praces.
The math on this has not moved – in fact, it’s worse than ever.
📉 As UDIA Victoria notes, developers are struggling to make apartments stack up: construction costs, easing prices, taxes, Suburban Rail Loop levies.
“You can’t let the greenfields just rip,” says Sonya Kilkenny. The same applies to towers that don’t stack up financially.
The development industry will back the centres and the fringe alike – wherever delivery works. But #housingsupply answers to what the market will pay, not to colours on a map.
Neither up nor out builds a home. Price point and feasibility do.
We all want density and greenfields done well. But choosing one or the other before the numbers work is pointless.
✅ Fix the input costs and you might have a chance: cut the taxes, charges, levies and delays that set the floor under every price point.