Planning - Principles and Examples

This section includes local and international examples to illustrate leading practice in delivering affordable housing through planning mechanisms. It also includes principles of leading practice and pitfalls to avoid

Leading practice examples

The regulatory context

State and regional policies and planning

Local planning

Principles of leading practice

The regulatory context

Local planning

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Leading practice examples- The regulatory context

South Australian Development Act

Following the passing of the Statutes Amendment Affordable Housing Act in June 2007, the overall objectives of the Development Act (1993) include an objective to promote or support initiatives to improve housing choice and access to affordable housing within the community (3ea).  Affordable housing is also included within a list of things councils are to reflect within their Development Plans, Strategic Direction Reports and Strategic Planning and Development Committees.

Criteria for determining whether a development application or policy is within the concept of affordable housing are set by regulation 4 of the SA Affordable Housing Trust General Regulations 1995. In assessing applications purporting to have affordable housing, assessing authorities refer the application to the Minister for Housing for review and certification against this criteria is provided through the housing department. 

In doing so, the Minister for Housing commonly signs a statutory covenant with the landowner, which restricts the use of the land to affordable housing. The covenant is recorded on the land title until the terms of the agreement are satisfied. Powers to enter into a statutory covenant are provided through the South Australian Housing Trust Act 1995 (s21a) and can, among other things, restrict the sale, tenancy and use of the land.

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New South Wales’ Environmental Planning and Assessment Act

The overall objectives of the Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979 (EPAA) include a commitment to promote and retain affordable housing (s 5(a)(viii)). The plan-making provisions of the Act also state that local instruments may include arrangements for ‘providing, maintaining and retaining, and regulating any matter relating to, affordable housing’ (s 26(d)).

When assessing a development application, a consent authority is required to consider any environmental planning instrument, or draft instrument, as well as ‘the likely impacts of that development, including environmental impacts on both the natural and built environments, and social and economic impacts in the locality’ (s 79C). Such impacts could include the social impacts of development likely to reduce opportunities for low-cost housing.

In addition, the EPAA provides for planning authorities to enter into planning agreements with developers to collect contributions for any public purpose, including ‘the provision of (or the recovery of the cost of providing) affordable housing (s 93F(2)(b)).

The EPAA also makes specific provision for development conditions requiring contributions or land for affordable housing (ss 94F, 94G) (within the constraints established by state policy (State Environmental Planning Policy – Affordable Housing (SEPP 70)).

Leading practice examples - State and regional policies and planning

South Australia: Planning for affordable housing

Planning for affordable housing in South Australia occurs within the framework of the Housing Plan for South Australia. This plan includes a target of achieving 15 per cent affordable housing within all new developments. Five per cent of this should be high need housing. This affordable housing target can be achieved through a variety of ways ranging from design and construction innovations to achieve lower priced market housing, through to new financing models or the use of restrictions to ensure that the target housing is sold or leased to a prospective home buyer who meets defined eligibility criteria or a registered affordable housing provider (SA Govt, 2007). These targets are supported under the regional Planning Strategies, which aim to achieve 15 per cent affordable housing within all significant new housing developments and specifically require councils to consider how they are to achieve this through their local strategic and development plans (SA Govt, 2006).

Western Australia: The holistic approach

Western Australia embeds ‘affordable housing’ into a larger goal of ‘Affordable Living’, taking into account interrelated issues of location, its subsequent transport costs and effect on employment opportunities. The Department for Planning and Infrastructure is working with its portfolio partners and the Department of Housing and Works on a strategy for Western Australia that considers the relationship between housing, services and employment and affordable living.

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Queensland: State and regional planning for affordable housing

Queensland’s State Planning Policy for Housing and Residential Development (released in January 2007) emphasises:

• local needs assessment frameworks
• strategies to reduce barriers to housing diversity in local schemes,
• reducing land and building costs of housing through graduated planning standards.

Graduated standards establish different requirements for allotment sizes, private open space, and car parking in response to different housing forms, and are intended to reduce building costs for more modest dwellings.

The South East Queensland Regional Plan (2005–26) includes policies to encourage all major new development and redevelopment to incorporate affordable housing, including appropriate housing for the entry buyer and low-income housing markets; consider measures for providing and retaining affordable housing in Local Growth Management Strategies; consider affordable housing in decisions on the disposal or redevelopment of government property and surplus land’; and ‘monitor housing prices, land availability and other factors which affect housing costs as part of an annual land monitoring program’ (Q’land Govt., 2005).

Under the Queensland Housing Affordability Strategy an Urban Land Development Authority will take a major role in planning, acquiring and assembling land, and developing or facilitating development to improve housing supply and affordability, particularly in high growth areas (Q’land Govt., 2007).

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State policy approaches for affordable housing in NSW

In NSW there are several State Environmental Planning Policies (SEPPs) relevant to affordable housing.

SEPP 10: Retention of Low Cost Rental Accommodation

  SEPP 10 aims to retain existing sources of low-cost accommodation (boarding houses, hostels and low-cost rental dwellings) within the Greater Metropolitan Region of Sydney, Newcastle and Wollongong.

SEPP 5: Housing for Seniors or People with a Disability

  This policy aims to ensure a sufficient supply of accommodation for older people and people with a disability by relaxing local residential development controls (subject to strict criteria about location and design). An additional incentive (an increased FSR/development envelope) is allowed where affordable housing is provided as part of the development.

SEPP 70: Affordable Housing (Revised Schemes)

  SEPP 70 identifies a need for affordable housing in a limited number of local government areas (Willoughby, and parts of the City of Sydney) and amends local and regional environmental planning instruments to enable levying of development contributions for affordable housing (Centre for Affordable Housing, 2007).

Leading practice examples - Local planning

Local government and social planning

Port Macquarie–Hastings Council developed the 2005-2010 Port Macquarie-Hastings Social Plan in accordance with the Local Government (General) Amendment (Community and Social Plans) Regulation 1998, which requires that all NSW Councils develop plans to identify the range of activities that Council will undertake to enhance the social health of the community. The plan was endorsed and adopted by Port Macquarie-Hastings Council in December 2005.

Under the Plan, Council is currently in the process of developing an Affordable Housing Strategy for the Hastings Local Government Area. The Strategy will:

• assess current housing issues; 
• analyse current affordable housing projects to meet needs in the short, medium  and long terms; and
• based on the above analysis, identify gaps, leading to new planning and infrastructure development projects to fill those gaps and meet market demand and needs in the short and medium term.

The draft Affordable Housing Strategy is currently being finalised.  An Affordable Housing Advisory Committee, comprised of Council staff and Councillors (including the Mayor and Deputy Mayor), key government stakeholders, community housing organisations, community representatives and local developers will provide advice on the Strategy’s overall management.

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Principles of leading practice - The regulatory context

Legislation and policy

A leading practice legislative and policy environment for affordable housing will:

• articulate relevant planning objectives to establish affordable housing as a fundamental aim or object of planning processes and decisions
• ensure that planning legislation enables the use of a range of planning mechanisms, so that those most appropriate to the circumstances can be selected
• include provisions that extend beyond the formal planning process itself (such as referrals for the negotiation of affordable housing)
• ensure provisions relate to matters that can reasonably and legitimately be addressed through the planning system
• use a clear and consistent framework for assessing housing need at local government and regional or sub-regional level
• be consistent across state, regional, and local scales in promoting affordable housing in plan making and development assessment
• accommodate housing diversity objectives and outcomes (including affordable housing) alongside objectives and provisions relating to the physical, natural and cultural environment
• ensure planning policies support housing density targets in high amenity areas
• ensure objectives related to the environment, conservation, sustainability, public safety, housing quality and amenity are not compromised.

Principles of leading practice - Local planning

Planning systems that support affordable housing

• Use planning mechanisms to reinforce and support broader national and state policies and levers for affordable housing and housing assistance.
• Address housing need across regional and sub-regional markets, rather than in relation to local government boundaries.
• Use affordable housing mechanisms to complement other strategic planning goals, or, where such goals present a barrier to affordable housing development, provide a way to offset these negative impacts.
• Facilitate a timely and adequate supply of residential development opportunities in appropriate locations.
• Offset or enable replacement of low-cost housing lost through development processes.
• Facilitate the development of affordable housing in response to a diversity of community and workforce needs.
• Achieve certainty in affordable housing requirements and ensure requirements are applied in a transparent and consistent way.
• Monitor housing market trends and demographic change, and ensure strategies respond to this change.

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Pitfalls to avoid

• Avoid unnecessary planning requirements that increase the costs of housing production, like delays or uncertainty in securing planning approval, excessive development controls, fees or charges.
• Ensure that planning policies or decisions do not contribute to or reinforce spatial polarisations of socio-economic groups across a metropolitan or regional area.
• Avoid planning mechanisms for affordable housing which undermine other important strategic planning goals.

Additional supporting tools

Planning initiatives relating to affordable housing are best supported by:

• overall objectives in a local residential plan to maintain and encourage affordable housing within the area
• specific zone objectives
• provisions outlining expectations relating to the protection or promotion of affordable housing within the area (for instance, a provision indicating the intention to seek provisions for affordable housing in certain circumstances
• design codes and or approvals policies that promote housing diversity and affordability
• a framework for entering into planning agreements and to streamline negotiations relating to agreements for affordable housing.
• inclusion of access to affordable housing in Council Social Plans or Council Housing Plans.

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