Scot urges Lord Mayor Moore to make housing affordable

Scot urges Lord Mayor Moore to make housing affordable

Lord Mayor Clover Moore has been urged to do more to tackle housing affordability, as City of Sydney Labor Councillor Linda Scot has backed a federal review of negative gearing at the national Labor conference.

Ms Scot said that Lord Mayor Clover Moore and other councilors have shirked responsibility for the unaffordability of housing and someone needed to take action to keep the area affordable for teachers, academics and service staff that are vital to the community.

“As part of the largest political movement in Australia, I work to take issues that matter in the City of Sydney to the national agenda to achieve change,” Ms Scot said.

“Unlike the 11 years under Lord Mayor Moore, I don’t believe that writing letters, with no action, will meet the needs of our Sydney communities on national issues.”

Scot says she has put several proposals for affordable housing to council including developing council assets for affordable housing, working more with housing providers, as well as making the city competitive for affordable housing project by working with developers.

Clr Scot said the Lord Mayor should support a review of negative gearing, which would halt increasing house prices.

“I do call on her to support my actions, to secure a review of negative gearing,” Scot told City Hub.

But Lord Mayor Clover Moore told City Hub that the City has supported the delivery of 858 new affordable housing dwellings, with an additional 629 dwelling in the pipeline.

“The City of Sydney has exhausted every option we have available under current legislation to encourage affordable housing. We need State and Federal Governments to act – unfortunately Labor and Liberal governments at the state and federal level have utterly failed to address this issue,” Clr Moore said.
“Where allowed by the NSW Government we’ve introduced Affordable Housing Levies, we have amended planning controls and negotiated Voluntary Planning Agreements, we have transferred our land to community housing providers and invested in affordable housing projects.
 

According to ABS data from 2011, 60.7 per cent of dwellings in the City of Sydney local government area was rented, one of the highest proportion of rented properties in Australia.

Councillor Scot refutes the notion that the removal of negative gearing would effectively shrink supply in the rental market and increase rent prices.

“That has been shown to be false, there has been lots of good analysis, when Paul Keating removed negative gearing, it was revealed in some cities, that it was those local factors driving rents rather than negative gearing.”

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