The vote doesn't mean shovels in the ground just yet. What it does mean is that the next step can begin: figuring out whether a viable affordable housing project can be built on the site without dipping into council funds.
Before landing on a path forward, council officers sat down with community housing organisations and developers to get an honest read on an environment where construction costs are high, finance is tight, and grant funding is fiercely contested. Any project will need to work within these realities.
In line with its broader property strategy, Council has made clear it wants to lease the land rather than sell it. It has set out a revised set of parameters to guide the expressions of interest process, notedly that any development would need to deliver at least 50 affordable rental homes for key workers, with rents capped below 75 per cent of market rates. In addition to this, building height would be limited to around eight storeys and good design is non-negotiable.
It was also made clear that the project requires no council capital or ongoing funding. If a small proportion of market-rate housing (up to 20 per cent of dwellings) is needed to make the numbers stack up, that's on the table, but only as a last resort.
While 50 homes on their own won't make a dint in Victoria's housing crisis, supporters of the project argue that's not quite the point. For a nurse, a barista or a childcare worker trying to stay close to where they work, even a handful of genuinely affordable homes in the right location matters.
Yarra City Council has now signalled it's willing to find out whether public land, industry expertise and community expectations can be stitched together into something that works. The goal is simple enough – keeping Yarra a place where ordinary people can still afford to live.
