At a packed forum at Kiama Leagues Club on Wednesday night, residents lined up to say one thing: Council's housing strategy does not represent us.

It doesn’t reflect the reality of life here, and it won’t deliver the future our community needs.

Tony Gilmour, retired urban planner, opened with a calm demolition job.

Councillor Melinda Lawton convened the forum.

The strategy, he said, had been years in the making but still lacks clarity, transparency, or anything resembling strategy.

The numbers are outdated. The community input has been ignored. The vision? Missing.

He called it wishy-washy. He was being polite.

Dr Tony Gilmour and Michelle Adair

Michelle Adair, CEO of the Housing Trust, reminded us what happens when workers can’t afford to live here.

You lose your GP. You lose teachers. You lose your café staff.

You lose your community. If Kiama wants to stay the same, she said, it has to change.

Renowned local architect Madeleine Scarfe brought it home.

You can’t call something a strategy if you don’t say how you’ll reach your goals.

The document lists problems but offers no real solutions.

No controls on short-term rentals. No commitment to one- or two-bedroom homes. Just more sprawl.

Environmental expert David Pepper warned of a suburban creep from Gerroa to Bombo, with no regard for biodiversity or liveability.

Greenfield sites aren’t just paddocks. They are part of an ecological system. Tear that up, and you don’t get it back.

Then came Jordan Casson Jones, who is 21 and raised in Kiama.

Living in a granny flat with his partner, both working, both studying, still struggling. “If I had children,” he said, “I couldn’t afford to stay here.” How many more young people will Kiama lose?"

And finally, Jacqueline Forst lit the match.

A strategist, carer and self-confessed forum crasher, she cut straight to the truth. “We cannot fix this by building more houses,” she said. “Tinkering at the margins is over.”

Her message? Reject the developer-first model. Build bottom up. Empower locals. Use our brains and land value for something better.

She called out the cheap shots. The bureaucrats laughing at Kiama for being NIMBYs.

The big city powerbrokers are dismissing local voices, Forst said. And then she turned it.

We are not naysayers. We are a region of housing innovators, she said, and it’s time we acted like it.

From rock star futurists to real-world renters, the message was clear: we are not passive bystanders to Kiama’s future. We are the blueprint.

So, what now?

Residents need to make noise by writing submissions, emailing councillors and challenging the corporate spin because if this version of the strategy goes through unchanged, Kiama is at risk of losing more than trees and footpaths but the very soul of its community.

The deadline for feedback is Sunday. The stakes are high. Have your say here.