Local community group Kiama Matters Inc voiced their concerns about the Housing Strategy at the Public Access Meeting on Monday night.

Committee member, Dr Alan Woodward, spoke on behalf of Kiama Matters, a local community association for residents in the central and immediate areas around Kiama with about 500 people on board.

They recently formed a working group on housing to look after the interests of residents in the Kiama area, as well as Jamberoo, Gerroa and Gerringong.

In voicing his support for elements of the Housing Strategy Version 2, which will be voted upon at Tuesday night’s Council meeting, Dr Woodward said it gets a big tick for outlining how Kiama will meet the state government requirement for 900 dwellings in five years.

“Everybody wants Kiama to be a thriving and livable place and housing supply, type and cost is a really big part of that,” he said.

“The level of community interest in the housing strategy and housing issues reflects people's realisation of that.

“Most people, certainly from what we can discern both through our own contacts and members and from the working group, are very open to the notion of growth in population.

“There are some people always in the community who will be ‘no growth whatsoever’ but our sense of it is that it’s not the majority of people and that was reflected actually in the community feedback to the community strategy that Council developed where the message was pretty clear that the community wanted growth but for that growth to be managed and managed well.

“It identifies opportunities and names some of the issues we have to think about not only of housing but also the commercial lands, possibility for educational and leisure facilities, and environmental constraints.

“It also recognises that there is a real need to address the infrastructure issues surrounding any housing growth and population growth in the area and it articulates what some of those infrastructure issues specifically are.”

However, he added that Kiama Matters Inc thinks it falls short in a couple of areas.

“Firstly it's probably worth just clarifying whether the purpose of the strategy is housing or housing and growth, because if it's simply housing for five years it describes how you reach the state government target and conceivably after that five years another target could be looked at and set,” he said.

“But rather it identifies a population growth and an expansion of housing and dwellings in the area and it puts forward some of the arguments around economic activity and other issues including critical mass for facilities or possibly a university site and things like that.

“So it really needs to be more clear about what actually it is providing a strategy for - because it's not just a housing strategy as it has been drafted.

“It defines the Kiama expansion area as including the western areas and this is probably the most contentious thing.

“But it does not identify priority areas for medium density growth and development, and in particular it does not explore the potential for what might be called middle-high density, that is density of around three, four, maybe five storeys which has already been explored both in Sydney and other cities.

“Canberra is a particularly good illustration of that where their planning approach is looking at this mid-high density and that surely would be an option in Kiama.

“It does not propose any targets for either the dwelling type or the affordability of housing or limits on the use of existing infrastructure that might be constraints in particular areas, nor does it set a target around short-term rentals.

“We have a potential large growth in the footprint and expansion of the Kiama area particularly without any real controls or targets around what development might occur.”

Dr Woodward said Kiama could end up with more of the same housing.

“In short it could allow us to simply have a whole lot more four-bedroom homes that are in the same price range as what's currently on the market for those dwellings,” he said, adding there was “no real addressment of the stresses facing people in terms of housing affordability or location or type”.

“It could result in profound loss of character, amenity and livability and it could result in real impacts around the environmental areas and particularly sensitive areas including around the Spring Creek catchment.

“So it doesn't have enough there to provide the protections that are matched to the growth strategies.

“Notably it does not have any strategies around employment lands, rural lands or environmental assessment. It just says that work needs to be done. So we see this is really the big problem.

“It's the order in which things are proposed to happen. It's sort of saying let's set the parameters and then get on with the planning work and that's what the feedback from the community is saying we're concerned about that. No argument with the objectives broadly speaking but the way to get there.”

Dr Woodward proposed that Council could create the 900 dwellings in five years udner the Strategy but “take longer to look into the expansion areas and further options”.

“And to do that with more intensive and deliberative input from the community, possibly through something like a community forum or a deliberative process, and to report back to the community on that so that innovation options and ideas can come forward.

“There's been a lot of input from planning officials, from the state agencies, from the property and and housing industry but I'm putting it to you there needs to also be the input from the residents in the community and those interests need to come forward because in a democracy at the end of the day the people always right.”

He called on Council to put a timeframe on a process for another 12-24 months to engage with people in the community “to see what actually are some of the more creative options we could come up with”.

“And when you come up with those, that's when you go back to the state agencies on the front foot and go to the private sector and say, this is what we're interested in.”