Sydney has some of the highest housing costs in the world, with rents and property prices in the inner city spiralling out of reach for average income earners. Now one inner-city council has come up with a novel way to provide affordable housing for essential workers.
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00:00The high cost of Sydney housing is pushing essential workers out of the inner city.
00:08It means nurses, teachers and police officers often have to travel long distances to get
00:13to work.
00:15The latest figures show that for a registered nurse, the only affordable rentals are in
00:20the outer suburbs.
00:22And there are no parts of Greater Sydney where they would be able to buy a flat.
00:27The Inner West Council wants to make life easier for essential workers.
00:32It wants to turn four council car parks into 200 affordable units.
00:37We think that by using our public assets, in this case car parks and depots, to be repurposed
00:43as a different public asset, housing, to meet the crisis, we can make a real difference.
00:48The community response has been mixed.
00:51Affordable housing, all the way, absolutely, it just makes sense, right?
00:57Car parks, we've already got enough car parks.
00:59Look, I think we need car parks in this area as well, but we also need more affordable
01:03housing.
01:04Planning experts say it's important that essential workers live close to work.
01:09Lack of affordable housing near to where essential workers have to work impacts recruitment and
01:14retention and that can have a very significant impact on how our critical essential services
01:21function.
01:22Using public land removes one of the main barriers to building affordable housing, that's
01:26the cost of the land.
01:28But even then, there's no quick fix.
01:31This car park in Leichhardt was earmarked for affordable housing back in 2015.
01:36Nearly a decade later, not a single brick has been laid.
01:41The council says it does not have the money to build the development, but that new funds
01:46flowing from federal and state governments will make this project possible.