Who wants to defoliate our leafy suburbs?

A passionate and important battle is unfolding in our southern Banyule suburbs.

It is coming to a street near you - maybe even your street.

You see, we are part of the "leafy, inner suburbs" for which politicians and planners are coveting access - not for themselves, but for property developers to build medium and high density housing.

They wish to sweep aside our planning and zoning regime to give developers a new deal - provided that the private sector developers do the government's job of providing social housing.

It is a battle for the streetscapes, the architecture and how we live as individuals and communities - right here where we have chosen to live. Where we are paying or have paid for the opportunity to live where we live.

We live here because we have chosen to fund - over many years, even decades - the properties we own and live in, in the streets and suburbs we have selected down the years for their character, their quiet, their gardens, their space.

There are those in local and State Government prepared to kick the chair out from under us by changing the nature of our suburbs.

Those of us invested - literally - in our neighbourhoods, people who work voluntarily to improve our public spaces for community benefit, are under threat from the very people who should be defending us. The people we pay rates and taxes to.

There are people elected by us, and people paid in public services to work for us, who have another agenda.

Their agenda is to bring medium and high density housing to our neighbourhoods, irretrievably changing our neighbourhood character and style of living, to meet the needs and interests of people who may never have lived in Banyule.

People who may not even know where Banyule is, nor which suburbs it encompasses.

That term "medium and high density" means building higher and higher.

The State Government wants to increase Melbourne's overall population density from their current target of 15 dwellings per hectare to 20.

It is galling for all of us who have done housing extensions or modifications, and done battle with Council about heights, natural ground level definitions, set backs from property boundaries, shadow diagrams etc, to have all of that swept aside - not appeal-able - in the interests of  a tiny number of good people who, in an open commercial real estate market, cannot contemplate living here.

Just like I cannot contemplate living in a long list of Melbourne's affluent suburbs - East Melbourne, South Yarra, Toorak, Camberwell, Brighton, Prahan, Glenferrie etc.

And remember 90% of the occupants of these proposed new housing developments in Ivanhoe, Eaglemont & East Ivanhoe will be people who will pay commercial rates to purchase or rent!

So 9 out of 10 accommodation units imposed on us per "out of context, out of scale" developments are destined to finish up with people who do not need any State assistance.

Should the needs of that 1 in 10 who qualify for housing assistance fundamentally change our neighbourhoods?

Make no mistake - there are powerful social justice, moral and economic reasons for the State to ensure there is a sufficient supply of adequate quality and affordable accommodation available to its citizens.

The current housing market, a creation of our economy, our government, our planning and zoning rules, our taxation system and more, excludes many good, prudent, thrifty people from home ownership.

It also excludes people beset by misfortune, suffering ill-health, afflicted by shear bad luck, people who are victims of domestic violence, other crimes and exploitation.

They need, and deserve, help.

There is a false narrative abroad, carefully constructed by those with an interest in the ballot box, to make emotive what are fairly simple facts and figures.

Fact - Banyule has an estimated 500 "homeless" people (their figures, not mine). How many one, two or three bedroom units does that equate to? 200, 250?

Fact - Banyule already has many multiples of  "available now", vacant accommodation to service this number of people

Fact - too much accommodation that is too expensive for too many in the community is already being built here where land prices, and consequently accommodation prices, rule out so many.

Fact - extensive areas of Banyule have State owned housing from the 1950s and 60s urgently needing "urban renewal" to extricate the social, welfare and emergency housing component of our community from the blight and stigma of their present location.

Fact - the State Government's parlous financial situation means the State cannot itself fund "public housing" construction. It needs Federal Government funding, and even then it needs private sector "partners" to stump up cash, do the building and turn a profit - while setting aside a mere 10% of newly built dwellings for "welfare housing".

Fact - the State Government owns vast amounts of metropolitan land suitable for change of use for new housing construction.

Fact - there is a huge amount of surplus CBD office space that the Property Council deems fit for conversion to quality accommodation.

Fact - our local schools, roads, bridges, power grid, job market, kindys and childcare providers etc cannot accommodate continual growth - we are not some "Magic Pudding" to supply "leafy inner eastern suburbs" opportunities.

There are areas urgently needing "urban renewal", there is productive agricultural land to retain, there are more and more people to house - neither the best nor the only answer is to impose medium and high density housing on our neighbourhood.

Remarkably, the State Government claimed in 2017 to be on the case of this shortfall in housing.  Six major projects were announced - according to The Age not a single accommodation unit has been built by August 2023

Out on Bell Street the long-awaited Tarakan development is part completed and people are close to moving in - tenants are selected and have done inspections.

Out on Bell Street the Bell-Bardia development is "constructus interruptus". Demolished public housing, 6 years of vacant land, awaiting a lottery win of Federal housing money because the State has empty pockets, & the private sector will not come on board.

So we should just cop having our suburbs de-natured because of a State Government failure to carry out legitimate public housing projects.

I calculate that $380 million of Commonwealth Games cancellation compensation payments, for one example, would buy a lot of public housing.

Using the Bellfield project's $400,000 per dwelling as a guide, you would get around a 1000 dwellings from that $380 million - then the subsidised rent, or sales proceeds to needy citizens, would fund the next tranche of public housing.............

Meanwhile, up in Sydney the re-vitalisation, refurbishment and expansion of inner city welfare housing gets a guernsey!

Does more housing equate to more affordable housing?