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NSW has spent the past few years reshaping the policy and regulatory landscape around housing. Transport-oriented development, low- and mid-rise reforms, the Housing Delivery Authority and changes to building regulation have all been part of a concerted effort to lift housing supply.
But the questions now confronting NSW extend well beyond one state – and well beyond planning: how do we convert reform into homes that are actually built, make development feasible without sacrificing affordability, and put in place the infrastructure, funding arrangements and long-term certainty needed to deliver housing at scale?
At Business Western Sydney’s annual Housing Now! Conference on 7 August, one message came through repeatedly: the next challenge is delivery.
The Housing Now! Alliance deserves credit for helping drive that shift. Formed in 2023, it brings together business, unions, universities, community and advocacy organisations around a “Homes for All” agenda. Its 2026 Policy Platform proposes 12 major housing initiatives alongside reforms for modular construction, affordable and essential-worker housing, student accommodation and underused land.
Premier Chris Minns’ announcement at the conference on Parramatta North illustrated the wider ambition: around 2000 homes, including affordable housing, public open space, employment opportunities and provision for a university campus linked to the Westmead Health and Innovation District.
But across the day, one word surfaced repeatedly: feasibility.
That concern is real. A planning approval is not a dwelling, and zoned capacity does not automatically translate into homes. Construction and financing costs, infrastructure requirements, contributions and delays can make development that is permissible on paper commercially impossible.
Kiersten Fishburn, secretary of the Department of Housing, Infrastructure and Planning, gave one of the clearest accounts of what needs to change: greater proportionality, predictability and coordination across agencies, with a culture focused on outcomes rather than process for its own sake.
Federal Productivity Commissioner Alison Roberts reinforced that point. The Commission’s current inquiry into housing supply identifies reform of land-use controls and better coordination of housing-enabling infrastructure as among the measures likely to have the greatest effect on supply and affordability.
But there is a danger in allowing feasibility to do too much policy work.
Feasibility is a condition that policy has to confront. It should not become the argument that ends the policy conversation.
If an affordable housing requirement makes a project unviable under current land prices, financing costs and expected returns, reducing the requirement is not the only response. Governments can also change the equation through additional density, public land, subsidies, infrastructure investment, lower cost finance, value capture and greater certainty.
Otherwise, we risk allowing today’s land values and development expectations to determine how much affordable housing can be delivered, rather than using public policy to change those conditions.
Minister Rose Jackson provided an important reminder of why that matters: housing supply may be an economic and productivity issue, but for people experiencing homelessness or severe housing stress it is first about having a secure place to live.
The conference’s own platform calls for a statewide approach to affordable housing, with consistent definitions, targets, delivery and monitoring, and acknowledges that additional density and public investment may be needed to close feasibility gaps.
That is welcome. But defining affordable housing should be the beginning of the conversation, not its destination.
The harder questions are: affordable to whom? Under what tenure? Who is eligible? For how long? And who retains the benefit of public subsidy over time?
This is not solely an NSW problem. Across Australia, affordable housing definitions, eligibility and retention arrangements remain fragmented. A dwelling retained as affordable housing in perpetuity is fundamentally different from one whose affordability requirement eventually expires.
The same applies to essential worker housing. The conference proposes embedding it in planning rules and in new social infrastructure requiring essential workers. But that raises the next questions: which occupations qualify, at what incomes, on what geographical basis, what happens when employment changes, and how is the housing retained for future workers?
Other countries have been working through these issues for decades. Australia can learn from that experience while developing models suited to our own housing system. Crucially, definitions, eligibility, tenure, allocation and retention need to be worked through alongside planning reforms and targets – not left until afterwards.
That same need to think ahead emerged strongly in the discussion of modern methods of construction (MMC).
Minister Anoulack Chanthivong outlined NSW’s regulatory reforms for prefab and modular construction. The industry discussion repeatedly returned to three requirements: scale, repetition and pipeline. NSW’s own MMC program explicitly aims to support a reliable and consistent pipeline of homes.
The UK provides a cautionary lesson. A House of Lords Built Environment Committee inquiry found that several modular firms had failed financially and concluded that public investment had not been backed by a sufficiently coherent strategy or strong pipeline.
The lesson is not that MMC failed. It is that factories cannot survive on sporadic projects.
NSW is already beginning to tackle the pipeline problem. Homes NSW is using MMC for social housing and has established a procurement list for manufacturers and suppliers. Landcom chief executive Alexander Wendler also spoke at the conference about its modular trials and acknowledged the need to move towards scale.
This points to a wider opportunity. Public procurement of social and affordable housing can provide the repeat demand MMC needs, alongside student accommodation and regional worker housing. As Evolve Housing’s Lyall Gorman and Faith Housing chair Rob Stokes emphasised, expanding social and affordable housing requires sustained investment and long-term delivery partnerships.
Housing delivery is also about building neighbourhoods, not simply homes
Several speakers challenged the simplistic NIMBY-versus-YIMBY framing. The broader message was that communities are more likely to accept density when they can see what comes with it: transport and services, but also parks, tree canopy and quality public space.
Western Sydney is a particularly acute example of a challenge facing growing communities across Australia. Green and social infrastructure are not amenities to add after the housing is built. They are part of the enabling infrastructure needed to create liveable, resilient neighbourhoods and communities.
The launch of the new Sydney Plan this week reinforces that direction. Its longer-term approach to housing and jobs, stronger alignment with infrastructure, and emphasis on open space and the blue-green grid are welcome. But a 30-year plan is only as strong as its implementation. The hard work now is coordinating infrastructure, investment and delivery across agencies and levels of government so that housing, jobs and liveable communities actually arrive together – rather than infrastructure playing catch-up with growth.
These are also questions we are examining through Western Sydney University’s Urban Transformations Research Centre: how modern construction can support housing delivery; how green and other enabling infrastructure can be financed and delivered alongside growth; and how essential-worker housing can become a durable part of Australia’s housing system.
The conference has created an important coalition and helped shift the NSW debate from reform towards delivery.
The next stage needs to be just as ambitious.
Definitions, targets and planning reform are necessary, but they are not enough. Eligibility, tenure, long-term affordability, infrastructure, funding and construction capacity all need to be worked through at the same time – not bolted on later.
