Development company chief calls for greater community collaboration to meet housing shortfall

Developers need to challenge resistance to their planning proposals and encourage community collaboration with projects to address the housing shortage in Australia, the head of a major land development company has said.

Planning processes had moved from being administrative, objective and evidence-based to a situation where agreements were brokered between stakeholders, Investa Land chief executive Cameron Holt told delegates at the 2014 HIA Building Better Cities Summit in Sydney last week.

“The development industry and housing industry needs to push back to objective and evidence-based research,” Holt said.

He cited ANZ and Australian Bureau of Statistics data that suggested there was a looming shortage of around 350,000 dwellings a year in Australia.

In some regions the community accepted there was a need for more housing but in other areas there was strong opposition to extra development, which led to missed opportunities to ease the supply shortage.

Holt said housing developers had a tendency to give in to stakeholder pressure and make concessions with their projects because of the need to quickly deploy capital.

“The cost of capital is burning a hole in their pockets,” he said.

Rather than a combative or deal-brokering approach, greater collaboration between developers, local councils and the community was needed to deliver better development outcomes, he said.

“We can work together and work collaboratively to address the common goal of addressing the housing shortage in Australia.”