There are huge variations in population growth across Sydney.Wolter Peeters
The imbalance has serious consequences for the Minns government’s attempts to inject some constraint on Sydney’s runaway real estate market through increased housing density in the inner-city and eastern suburbs,a shift from dumping housing developments on Sydney’s western fringes and fast-tracking construction of new housing across Sydney,including a quota for affordable accommodation.
New Australian show Sydney’s overall population growth slumped during the pandemic border closures. It has since recovered strongly:,mainly thanks to the surge in immigration numbers. The population of Greater Sydney reached 5.45 million. Some neighbourhoods are absorbing a disproportionate share of the post-COVID population surge. Western Sydney suburbs accounted for 17 of the state’s top 20 increasing population areas.
But around half of the city’s suburbs had not recovered their pre-pandemic head count. Among the largest declines compared with 2019 were Potts Point-Woolloomooloo,which lost nearly 3000 people,Kensington (down 1115),Newtown (down 906) and Bondi Beach-North Bondi (down 896). But the population boomed in greenfield suburbs to the city’s west:Marsden Park-Shanes Park in Sydney’s north-west added nearly 18,000 people between 2019 and 2023. Other suburbs to register strong post-pandemic growth include Wentworth Point-Sydney Olympic Park in the city’s central west,which added 6370 people in the period and Mascot,which added 3700.
KPMG urban economist Terry Rawnsley told theHerald’s Matt Wade and Nigel Gladstone that post-COVID population growth patterns meant the. “We’ve got some places where every bedroom is occupied,but in other parts of the city,you’ve got an average of 1 to 1.5 bedrooms empty in every dwelling,which is not the most efficient use of our housing stock,” he said.
As reports of homelessness,vaulting rents,interest rate rises and the inability of younger generations to buy dominate the headlines,Premier Chris Minns deserves credit for the way he has tackled the state’s housing supply crisis.
His government’s plan to get to grips with the soaring cost of homeownership in Sydney so far involves widespread rezoning,which will allow six-storey blocks within 400 metres of more than 30 of the city’s railway stations. He has faced concerted pushback from some Sydney mayors over density plans,one of whom absurdly said that allowing dual occupancy on properties would turn “western Sydney into Kolkata” and end backyard cricket.
Sydney’s anaemic rate of home building in the early 2000s plunged to levels lower than during the Great Depression and World War II. NSW productivity commissioner Peter Achterstraat has drawn attention to a wasteful mismatch in recent patterns of Sydney’s housing supply. He found fewer than 20 per cent of new dwellings between 2016 and 2021 had been built within 10 kilometres of the central business district. New housing supply in some affluent council areas close to the CBD has been scandalously small compared with areas further west and south-west.
The latest population statistics are further proof that the Minns approach of sharing the load is actually a good policy. We cannot keep all growth contained to a few areas on the fringes. While previous governments considered that good enough,Sydney’s housing supply has failed to keep pace with demand,resulting in consistent upward pressure on property prices and rents. Today’s housing crisis means such a narrow approach is not only inadequate to the task but also totally unsustainable.
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