Sydney YIMBY

18 months ago people said we were lying about not being able to put solar panels on homes in Inner West heritage conservation areas. Latest Grand Designs features an attempt to make an off-grid sustainable home and guess which Council tells them they can’t put solar panels on? Council planners do not live in the real world. https://lnkd.in/gikusEqJ

People are sleeping in their cars and the planners are handwringing over whether four storey apartment buildings are “discordant” with $3m terraces adjacent to the CBD.

North Sydney Council requests apartment building be made shorter and less affordable. Also for some reason nobody’s ever been able to explain to us you can’t build tall buildings where they’ll be visible from a heritage conservation area? It’s not enough for them that more than half of Crows Nest is covered by HCAs, they want to use them as a cudgel against homes in non-HCA parts too.

In a pattern we’re seeing across Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs, Bondi Public’s student numbers are going down so much they’re leaving classrooms empty and teachers are losing their jobs. Isn’t planning supposed to match homes to infrastructure? Is Waverley Council asleep at the wheel?

Advocacy win! 37 storey Edgecliff proposal which council rejected last month has now been approved unanimously by the planning panel and will go to state govt for gateway determination. Thanks to all those who wrote submissions in favour on such short notice.

Sydney Olympic Park 2050 plan is up for consultation, and Parramatta Council are fighting against it because they think rarely-used event parking should take priority over homes for people. Make a submission by this Friday using our submission guide attached, link in replies.

Anonymous grubs are letterboxing against public housing in Newtown, please send a submission by following the link in the comments. Deadline is TODAY. Few other interesting elements of this DA: - 40 page arborist report about one tree - 52 page heritage report - 95 page statement of environmental effects Every one of these reports has an industry of consultants behind it making sure they’re mandatory. Also, the community is being consulted! That’s what the DA process is. You can make submissions complaining that there are already enough social housing residents in your street until the sun comes down if that’s what you want. Appeals to “lack of consultation” are more often than not complaints about outcomes. The consultation happened and you didn’t get what you want.

Inner West Council just had their refusal of a Petersham boarding house overturned in court in a 50pg judgment. The thrust of their argument is that 19 people should be denied a home because some internal trusses on a non-heritage property would no longer be visible. Needless to say garbage like this has a chilling effect on DAs - how much higher does your projected profit margin have to be to accommodate such uncertainty and increased holding costs?

Motion moved by Wagga Wagga Council who don’t even have a housing strategy.

Brilliant final sign off from Michael Koziol: “The more I’ve learnt about the planning system, the more I am convinced the entire apparatus should be dismantled. It is essentially a cottage industry for academics and bureaucrats whose raison d’etre is to restrict, not enable, what can be done on a given piece of land. It provides the framework by which councillors, NIMBY neighbours and department officials can say “no”.” https://lnkd.in/gycTURJF