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Four concrete slabs languishing beside Parramatta Road in Sydney’s inner west will be transformed with hundreds of new apartments, under a Minns government plan to use surplus land for housing.
The proposal would deliver 340 homes – 30 per cent of which would be social housing dwellings – across four apartment blocks up to seven storeys on the disused WestConnex dive site in Haberfield.
The fate of multiple parcels of land, taken over for the $16.8 billion motorway project and since left empty, along Parramatta Road has long prompted calls for new housing to help revive the tired strip.
Lands and Property Minister Steve Kamper said the site was a prime location for housing as it was on a bus route, opposite a major supermarket and near two schools, as well as shops and essential services.
“Haberfield is exactly the sort of opportunity the [land] audit is designed to identify, a government-owned site that was no longer being used for its original purpose and can now help deliver hundreds of new homes, including social housing.”
The blocks, which were used for a project office and motorway works until about 2023, were identified in the government’s long-running surplus land audit.
Four buildings will range from three to seven storeys, with landscaped communal areas, parking spots for cars and bikes, and community and other non-residential uses fronting Parramatta Road.
Homes NSW, which is the government’s social and affordable housing agency, is asking the community to provide feedback on the proposal before a “state significant” development is lodged with the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure.
Housing and Homelessness Minister Rose Jackson said the sites, near Alt and Bland streets, represented a “fantastic opportunity” to deliver sorely needed housing.
“At a time when too many people are struggling to get a roof over their heads, we need to make the most of every suitable site we have, particularly in well-connected locations,” Jackson said.
The Inner West Council has for years called for the state government to rezone disused WestConnex dive sites along Parramatta Road to tackle the housing shortage, support low-income and essential workers, and help revitalise the much-maligned corridor.
Last year, government developer Landcom chose a separate former WestConnex dive site on Parramatta Road in Annandale as the first to be developed under NSW’s $450 million build-to-rent scheme, enabling 220 apartments to be built for essential workers such as teachers, nurses and police at subsidised prices. The complex will also include about 350 private and affordable homes.
Kamper said of the Haberfield sites that officials were “continuing to work across government to find more sites like this and grow the pipeline of land available for housing”.
The land audit was established as a means of unlocking sites – owned by departments or agencies that were unused or underutilised – for housing. In the June 2024 budget, the government estimated the scheme would deliver 21,000 private and affordable dwellings.
In August, a spokesman for Kamper said that of the 77 property audit sites announced publicly by the government, five had been acquired by Landcom, eight had been purchased by Homes NSW, and 26 had been settled or exchanged on the private market.
Planning officials expect about 50,000 homes to be finished in NSW this financial year, well short of the 75,000 needed for the state to meet its five-year target to deliver 377,000 homes by mid-2029.
The NSW Coalition has said the Minns government would not meet its National Housing Accord target, which it agreed with the federal government, until March 2032 – almost three years late.
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