Calls for reform as housing inquiry hears of worker displacement

ALMOST 70 per cent of Lorne’s homes sit empty through the off-season, and more than 21,000 spare bedrooms across the Surf Coast are underutilised, as the region continues to struggle to house its essential workforce, an inquiry into Victoria’s regional housing supply has heard.

Representatives from the Surf Coast Shire and Penny Hawe, a volunteer member of the Friends of Lorne community group, were among those to front the parliamentary inquiry earlier this year, where they spoke about the housing affordability crisis facing residents in the shire.

“Our median house price is $1.8 million or $2 million, and it is hard for anybody to buy a house,” Ms Hawe said.

“Fifty per cent of our essential workers, though, would not be eligible for anything that the Surf Coast Shire would be able to build with state government support because their incomes are too high.

“If you are a teacher at the school and you have got a partner working at the hospital, your income is going to be too high, but you are still not going to be able to buy a house in Lorne.”

She raised concerns that the state government’s Regional Worker Accommodation Fund which, supported by co-investment from private business, strives to deliver housing, accommodation and related infrastructure in regional communities, like Lorne, where workers are struggling to find affordable places to live, may serve to “just kick the problem up the road”.

“It is actually going to do more harm than good if it has this condition on it that it is only used for essential working for five years… We would love it to be 20 years,” she said.

“The hard story for our essential workers is the amount of travel that they have to do, and that also stops them from being volunteers for the SES or the CFA because they are coming from too far.

“Our post office guy, up until recently, used to travel from Point Cook to Lorne to run the post office… when he left, which he has now, the town was just devastated just because they knew how much he was putting into being in the town.”

But the need to ensure short-term rentals can still continue to cater for vital tourism, provides additional challenges.

Both parties advocated for the streamlining of planning approvals to boost housing stock, the introduction of financial incentives to encourage more long-term rental properties to enter the market, and a focus on providing infrastructure sooner that encourages housing growth.

“If we look at Winchelsea, it has [a population of] 2,500 and eventually it will be up to 18,000,” Surf Coast Shire general manager of placemaking and environment Chris Pike said.