Permitting additional dwellings on communities

Here are the arguments we present

Permissibility

As it stands the current LEP allows secondary dwellings and dual occupancies on RU1 & RU2 zonings on merit i.e., that environmental and social considerations are taken into account. Currently most Multiple Occupancies and Community Titles in our Shire, along with rural lots, fall under RU1 or RU2 zoning. There therefore currently exists the possibility to lodge development applications for additional dwellings on CTs and MOs with a simple modification of consent conditions.

Addressing the Housing Crisis

The region is currently experiencing a devastating crisis due to the lack of accessible long-term accommodation, brought about by a housing shortage, rising property prices and holiday letting pressures.

This crisis is leading to a loss of social diversity, separation of families and an exodus of long-term locals with their accumulated skills and talent.

Affordable housing is vital for a diverse and healthy community. Artists, artisans, musicians, carers, cleaners, café workers, elders and young people embarking on life’s journey, are all part of the mix that makes a community resilient and appealing to live in. It would be a tragedy to lose the vibrancy that has made this area unique for so many decades.

Intentional Communities as part of the solution

In the past few decades, rural land sharing communities have played a significant and positive contribution towards the provision of affordable housing in the region. 

Allowing additional dwellings is an untapped potential that could further that contribution in the short to medium-term.

Many community dwellings tend to be owner built, modest in nature and therefore cheaper than comparable urban or rural dwellings allowing for lower rents and catering to people of limited resources.

This form of settlement can provide social support mechanisms, in addition to delivering on goals of ecological repair, environmentally appropriate use, sharing of resources and local food growing.

For authorities to prohibit this form of housing on rural land sharing properties whilst allowing it on most other titles is ill conceived, and contrary to good planning practises. 

It is time for councils to acknowledge contemporary exigencies, revisit attitudes towards intentional communities and introduce clear provisions that allow for secondary dwellings and dual occupancies on merit.

Contribution to infrastructure

All approved Development Applications apport substantial contributions to council for infrastructure and maintenance.

Community Titles in particular are required by consent conditions to have up to date rigorous infrastructure. They are therefore ideally positioned to provide extra housing with no financial impost on the wider community.

Equity

Most rural lots in the region - including rural estate developments - can apply for approval for a secondary dwelling or detached dual occupancy. Normal merit consideration, such as the suitability of the site and conformance to criteria such as bushfire and wastewater standards, determines whether such a dwelling application is approved.

Currently, that right is highly restricted on rural Multiple Occupancy and Community Title properties. Applying such a selective restriction runs contra to social justice principals, it is totally inequitable to determine that such an option is denied to community lots, while allowing it on most other rural lots. Such a determination should be based solely on merit considerations.

Intergenerational living & ageing in place

Community members and lot holders who initially had no interest in secondary dwellings find themselves facing contemporary exigencies unimagined at the foundation of their communities, and needing to provide affordable accommodation for their children, ageing parents, friends in need, or to provide themselves with retirement accommodation with family support living nearby.

Many community members have raised families in the shire and are now watching helplessly as their children and a new generation struggle to find accommodation and enjoy the opportunities this area afforded them.

Permitting Secondary dwellings will not “open the floodgates”

Previous planning policy is misguided in much of its premise. It often assumed that permitting additional dwellings in the form of secondary dwellings and dual occupancies is a risky concept that could result in a flood of dwellings, and that such unplanned growth is neither permitted nor desirable.

This contention is absurd. The number of Multiple Occupancy and Community Title sites in the region is a small proportion of overall rural sites. Presently most other sites can apply for secondary dwellings and dual occupancies. This growth is ad hoc and not planned for in any strategy and has not resulted in the grave outcomes predicted.

Permitting Intentional Communities the ability to apply for secondary dwellings and dual occupancy on merit, will not result in the anticipated calamity historically espoused.

Contemporary Contingencies demand Contemporary Solutions

Councils needs to recognise that the actual social and economic exigencies in the region bear little resemblance to those that existed when most Intentional Communities were established and seek to evolve pragmatic and innovative planning policies to provide socially equitable solutions to the many pressing challenges we are facing as a community..