I’m wary of how diluted “affordable housing” means. Bypassing Council, VCAT and third party appeals are very tasty prizes for developers and I’m sure plenty would manipulate the definition of “affordable housing” to get a ticket to far less planning oversight, especially with the low bar of entry at 50 million. More housing is desperately needed, and NIMBY pushback has definitely been an issue, but I really hope the homes will actually be affordable, and that the Vic government planners will enforce good quality design, not boundary to boundary grossness with no setbacks or green space.
With the tower sites they’re already flagging that it’ll only be about 1/3 public with the rest commercial meaning how much land is retained is in question. At a minimum public housing priorities will lose any strata vote.
There are good reasons not to build monolithic public housing but communities need to be retained and it would mean the scale would need to be even bigger. As it is it won’t even cover the wait lists.
There’s zero trust in this government when it comes to public housing and mostly for well founded reasons.