Friends of Lorne call for creative housing solutions

A COASTAL residents’ group is urging the Surf Coast Shire to consider taking a more “creative” approach to dealing with housing shortages in Lorne.

The Friends of Lorne group, in response to the shire’s draft Urban Futures Strategy and Surf Coast Planning Scheme Review, has asked the shire to implement alternate methods to address the town’s housing shortage other than subdividing blocks and building new properties.

“Winchelsea and Torquay are designated as growth areas in the shire,” the Friends of Lorne committee stated in its December newsletter.

“By contrast, Lorne’s potential for growth is described as very limited due to terrain, landscape value, and extreme fire risk, and so Lorne must stay within the settlement boundary.

“Nonetheless, it is forecast that we need 60 additional dwellings by 2041.”

The Friends of Lorne outlined there were no particular equitable housing proposals at present, meaning land for future housing development will need to be sourced from subdivision and from higher densities in town.

Rather than the typical subdivide-and-build solution, the Friends of Lorne committee suggest the council should formulate a new equitable housing scheme to make existing holiday homes for sale more easily purchased by permanent residents and essential workers.

Lorne presently has about 1,724 dwellings, with 69 per cent of dwellings vacant for most of the year.

Under shared equity, a property is part-owned by the new homeowner and part-owned by investors and/or some kind of housing entity.

“That way we get to keep our vegetation and low rise/low density feel and keep our workers,” Friends of Lorne stated.

“We’ll argue that building and subdividing is not the first obvious choice, when so many homes lie vacant throughout the year and retaining our landscape is so highly valued.

“But we don’t rule out new housing development to supplement supply, like for smaller units, provided these are low rise, recessive in the landscape, and do not come at the cost of excessive vegetation removal.”

The feedback period for the strategy and review officially closed on December 29.

For more information and full timelines on the shire’s Urban Futures Strategy and Surf Coast Planning Scheme Review, head to yoursay.surfcoast.vic.gov.au