Tamworth Tomorrow forum seeks industry input on housing shortage

On Wednesday morning, Tamworth Regional Council convened a forum involving real estate agents, financial advisers, and social housing providers, to discuss options for promoting housing availability.

"A key priority for our economic development is housing. Housing is an issue across most of Australia, particularly in the regions, so we wanted to gather people in the room today to talk about housing: social housing, advocacy, attraction, demand and supply," council's Director of Growth and Development Jacqueline O'Neill said.

The forum was held behind closed doors with media access prohibited, however, the Leader learned the council has hired Wakefield Planning to refine the council's housing strategy.

"Working on the housing strategy means pulling together all the information that's there and giving a framework in terms of what interventions the council can make," Director of Wakefield Planning Angus Whitby said.

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He said those interventions could include working with organisations like Homes North to make more affordable housing available, offering loans for commercial projects, and making representations to the state government for changes to wider housing regulations.

"When we go out for exhibition in June, we'll be looking for people's feedback on the thoughts we're putting forward," Mr Whitby said.

He also said the report will likely suggest providing more opportunities to build denser housing developments, like multi-unit blocks and apartment complexes.

"Like most regional communities, Tamworth's got a very strong flavour of the detached house on its own block of land," Mr Whitby said.

Councillor Judy Coates said after the forum the community will need to balance its growing population with its desire to hold on to Tamworth's traditional country culture.

"We also spoke about the fact that we need to look at how to support small developers to perhaps buy a small pocket of land and maybe put up a couple of units or high-density dwellings," Cr Coates said.

"The bigger developments are looking after themselves. Arcadia and Stratheden, these are 10-year projects, but a lot of it is identifying smaller parcels of land, which might be a green space that's no longer being used all the way up to crown land."

She also said the issue of housing availability is "complex" and will take time to manage properly.

"Whatever the solution is it's going to be multifaceted, ranging from availability of financing to what's viable for development sizes," Cr Coates said.

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