The Sydney YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard) group is planning to send a slew of members to candidate forums,street stalls and councillor debates as it prepares for elections in September that are expected to be dominated by the housing debate and are being viewed as a test of the public’s attitude to state density reforms.
Justin Simon’s group has risen to prominence as the debate over density has intensified.Dion Georgopoulos
The group has amid heated debates about housing density in Sydney,and emerged as a key voice in support of the government’s Transport Oriented Density housing program.
Secretary Justin Simon said the group would not run any candidates but would work to show people “you can turn up and ask for more density”.
“These forums and candidate questions and that sort of thing,they’re not just for people to complain about it,even though they’ve been dominated by those people in the past,” he said.
The group will support activists in asking hyper-local questions of current and prospective councillors,and upload them to a central online database to showcase candidates’ attitudes towards housing issues.
More apartments are set to be built across much of Sydney.Dion Georgopoulos
“We’ll be running some online training about what levers council have access to with the housing crisis,and what the overall regulatory structure is so that people can make informed comments about how they can engage with candidates ahead of the election,” Simon said.
But don’t expect them to push a party line:Simon said planning decisions were driven far less by party lines and more by individual councillors’ attitudes to development.
“The biggest divide … is not in political parties,but the areas,the populations,that people have to cater to,and who the loudest people in those areas are,” he said. “If you’re looking at Woollahra,you’re going to find that the most pro-development person there is probably going to be worse than the median councillor in somewhere like Canterbury-Bankstown.”
Housing is emerging as a key battleground for councils across the city with elections four months away. But while the city has witnessed some resistance – rallies against development have made their way to state parliament – an anti-development attitude has emerged only in pockets.
Some groups,such as the Blue Mountains Conservation Society,have in the papers,declaring the Blue Mountains “not just another suburb of Sydney”.
“We request that you exclude the Blue Mountains Local Government Area from these proposed reforms,” the open letter – signed by nine of the 12 councillors – read earlier this month.
Housing Now chair David Borger said his advocacy group would begin attempting to convince people to “vote for housing”.
“In the past people have faced the choice of having anti-development candidates or pro-development candidates connected to the real-estate industry. What we need is pro-housing and pro-future candidates that are willing to change things through ethical ways.”
Chris Rath,a pro-development Liberal who has previously,expects a swing against Labor,as is common against incumbent state and federal governments in local elections.
“But some people in the Liberal party will say,‘Look how well we did,therefore NIMBY is the winning path’. It’s important not to conflate the protest vote against the state government of the day with NIMBY sentiment.”
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