Austrailia Trials Modular to Meet Housing Targets

_{A pre-fabricated modular home (Facebook/Chris Minns)}

Austrailian Premier Chris Minns announced ‘an important milestone in our work to utilise nontraditional methods of delivering more homes sooner’.  Pre-built modular homes will be trialled in New South Wales to boost social housing, as research shows new-home construction targets will not be met.

Sites in Wollongong and Lake Macquarie have been selected to trial modular social homes under a state government trial to speed up the delivery of new homes.

The government is still working through regulatory barriers for modular housing, which has not been rolled out at scale before.

The homes – previously used as temporary accommodation – are constructed using prefabricated modules made off-site to speed up the building process by 20% compared with traditional methods. Housing costs and availability were putting pressure on people in NSW and the state needed to use “nontraditional methods” to deliver homes sooner, the premier, Chris Minns, said on Monday.

“We are pulling every lever we can to tackle the housing crisis,” he said.

The housing and homelessness minister, Rose Jackson, said the trial was a step towards revolutionising public housing delivery.

“Leveraging modern construction methods will help us provide sustainable, quality housing faster for the people that need it most,” she said.

The government was working with the state’s building commission on standards for offsite manufacturing of homes.

The Wollongong MP, Paul Scully, said:

“Modular and modern methods of construction are used to produce award-winning architecturally designed homes in a timely and efficient manner, so it makes sense to trial this approach to construction as part of the Minns government’s commitment to build more social housing.”

Research from Oxford Economics Australia on Monday predicted more than one in five of the 1.2m dwellings the nation is trying to build over the next five years will not be completed.

Meanwhile business groups, universities and unions that were part of the Housing Now! alliance called for the appointment of a coordinator general to drive the delivery of new homes in NSW.

The role would direct government agencies to resolve planning challenges, reassess major, unapproved housing projects in a bid to resolve issues and guide government on infrastructure investment.

“A dedicated housing coordinator would cut through swathes of red tape, compel government agencies to address issues and inform cabinet on how to progress major housing projects stuck in the planning system,” said David Borger, the Housing Now! chair.

The recommendation was one of 10 the alliance made in its 2024 policy platform launched on Monday.

Other policies included rezoning to allow housing to be constructed at places of worship, alternative planning pathways for university accommodation, and better security for renters with an end to no-grounds evictions.

Borger was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary inquiry into a proposal to develop the Rosehill racecourse in Sydney’s west into a mini-city of up to 25,000 homes.

The inquiry, chaired by the opposition housing spokesperson, Scott Farlow, will examine what role the government played and the associated impacts on transport infrastructure and the horse-racing industry.

Source: The Guardian