As we stated in our previous post, the lack of detailed analyses by those councillors who endorsed the housing strategy is simply mind boggling. Not one of them mentioned or analysed any of the following:

  • Land capacity out to 2036 estimates that the municipality has scope (available land) for  50,000 net new dwellings. Housing projections state that all we need are approximately 13,000.
  • They simply accepted the assumption that more dwellings means greater affordability.
  • Removing the mandatory garden requirement will be ‘compensated’ by the landscape requirements – which of course aren’t specified in any document. All that we have is waffle and generalisations.
  • How increasing site coverage in the NRZ will ‘fit in’ with the climate emergency, urban forest strategy, etc.

By way of contrast, the best summation on the evening came from Esakoff. We have uploaded her statements and urge all residents to listen and consider what this means.

To further illustrate what is in store, here is part of the Housing Framework Plan. We’ve chosen the GRZ areas in East Bentleigh. All the streets presented in the darker orange now find themselves in the Substantial Change Area 2. This means: no mandatory garden requirement; tree canopy retention only where ‘practical’; reduction of rear setbacks and potentially lessening of onsite parking requirements. In other words, cramming more and more into these sites.

Finally, Athanasopolous cited the changes as only impacting a ‘small’ amount of properties. A public question asked on Tuesday night provided the answers as to the number of sites that will be affected by these proposals. In the GRZ Substantial Change Area 1 the answer provided was 7,624! The sites impacted in NRZ were said to be 3,075. That’s a grand total of 10,699 that will be severely impacted by the proposed changes. Glen Eira currently has 65,000 residential properties, but far less sites – since many are multi-storey containing many apartments. This is also true for the current dwelling proportion in GRZ but at a lower scale than the commercial areas. Even accepting this, we still estimate that roughly 15 to 20% of Glen Eira residents will face potential developments without the necessary strategic justification. Furthermore, if we assume that only 10% of these 10,000+ sites will increase their net dwellings by one (ie from 2 dwellings to 3 dwellings) that equates to another net 1000 plus dwellings. This is of course a very conservative estimate since the prognostications for ‘take up’ far exceed 10% and the likelihood of only a one net dwelling increase is again highly conservative. These proposed changes alone could deliver thousands upon thousands of net new dwellings with absolutely no guarantee that they will be cheaper, will assist in increasing our tree canopy, or assist in fighting climate change.

These figures also need to be seen in the context of what else is planned for Glen Eira. We should add in another 3000 at least for East Village, another 4000 under the Caulfield Station structure plan as stated in the Charter housing analysis. None of these account for what else might be in the pipeline throughout Glen Eira.

The pro-development agenda of these 5 councillors and this administration is continuing to destroy this municipality!