Opposition to social housing for homeless women misplaced

The so-called Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) forces have chalked up some risible justifications, but few are so openly ludicrous as the reasons put forward in opposition to a social housing complex for people over the age of 60 – mostly women – unable to find stable accommodation amid Sydney’s worsening housing crisis.

Residents of Hardwicke Street, Riverwood, in Sydney’s south, have signed a petition to the government opposing plans for a three-storey social housing block in their midst. They claim the modest development threatens to devalue their homes and disrupt the ambience of their “peaceful, family oriented neighbourhood” and lead to an “unwanted invasion of privacy” that might force many people to “keep blinds or curtains drawn at all times”.

The Herald’s Sydney editor Megan Gorrey reports their petition also claimed the complex would create an influx of residents and cars that would compromise safety and parking, and overburden community facilities. “Hardwicke Street has long been a peaceful, family-oriented neighbourhood, and this high-density project threatens to fundamentally alter its character, ambience, and appeal,” it said. “Preserving the unique, low-density character of Hardwicke Street is critical for maintaining the wellbeing and quality of life for its residents.”

Government social housing policies started 80 years ago to provide homes to returned services personnel, changed to locate working families near new manufacturing developments, and then evolved into the provision of shelter mainly to the aged and welfare recipients. The waiting list in NSW social housing now stands at 62,590 and the NSW Council of Social Service has estimated there was a shortfall of 221,500 social housing dwellings in 2023-24.

Homes NSW is proposing to build the 29 apartments with 14 car spaces, and Minister for Housing Rose Jackson said the Riverwood project complied with planning regulations and would enable Homes NSW to build more much-needed social housing at a time when there were “elderly women sleeping in cars”.

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The forces of NIMBYism invariably cloak objections to projects around planning and heritage and are rarely so upfront as the people of Hardwicke Street about the impact on house prices, let alone having to draw their curtains. They are apparently blind to the existing block of flats in their street and to any sense of social responsibility in an era when the housing crisis is everybody’s problem.

Sydney’s anaemic rate of home building in the early 2000s plunged to levels lower than during the Great Depression and World War II, and Premier Chris Minns deserves credit for the way he has tackled the state’s housing supply crisis by injecting some constraint on Sydney’s runaway real estate market through increased density and fast-tracking construction of some projects.

Of course, the right to object to development is sacrosanct, but the Minns reforms had a pretty tough year getting momentum on the issue in 2024, and 2025 will make or break the housing crisis. The NIMBYs of Hardwicke Street and their objectionable objections are an ominous start to the year, and cannot stand.