by Sahar Foladi
Greater Dandenong Council and mayor Jim Memeti have welcomed the State Government’s local housing targets to be achieved by 2051.
Local Governments have been given a clear-cut warning by the Premier Jacinta Allan that if they don’t meet these targets by allowing building permits, they will lose their planning powers.
The housing targets aim for 2.24 million new homes by 2051, to have more houses available for young families to move into established suburbs.
Greater Dandenong would have to achieve at least 52,500 additional homes in that time – alongside the 59,400 existing homes as of 2023.
The mayor, Jim Memeti says they want to be part of the solution to work towards housing availability.
He says the council doesn’t have any issues in failing to issue timely permits.
“We’re a bit unusual to a lot of other municipalities in that already a lot of the planning permits are taken away from our hands.
“We have a lot of declared areas in which the Planning Minister is the permit authority, such as central Dandenong.
“They need to cut red tape and if councils are not issuing permits or refusing to, the matter falls to the VCAT which takes a lot of time. I understand that in City of Greater Dandenong we don’t have that problem.”
“We’ve always been one of the best performing councils when it comes to planning application approvals.”
The Plan for Victoria – to be released soon – is said to contain a declaration that councils will be held accountable by the Government to change planning schemes if not enough housing capacity is provided.
“It’s simple – work with us to unlock space for more homes or we’ll do it for you,” the Premier has said.
“It’s not fair that Victorian families and young people have been completely locked out of living in some areas, while other parts of Melbourne have had to bear the brunt of all that growth.
“We’re in a housing crisis and the status quo is not an option. It’s time to shake things up.”
Dr Benno Engels is a senior lecturer within the Urban Planning program within the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University.
He says developers would have to buy off land with existing homes to build high rises in City of Greater Dandenong on already lack of vacant land.
“The most obvious places developers are going to buy land is with existing homes that are close to the attractions and which is basically transport.
“It’s a good plan, I don’t think it’s going to be easy to implement and the pressure is going to be put on the councils to attempt to achieve this, which means they basically got to attempt to rezone land,” he says.
“So it’s more attractive for developers to move in, which is going to only aggravate the existing residents and landowners.
“So, I think there are a lot of potential pitfalls to trying to implement this strategy because there isn’t much vacant land in the City of Greater Dandenong.”
Dr Engels thinks that the targets for some of the council areas won’t be met, making the state government’s threat to take away planning powers a “political headache” rather than a solution.
