Councillor Chris Harris

The Sydney Lord Mayor and the City of Sydney CEO misled City Councillors and the public when they announced an affordable housing project in Glebe as a done deal on 29th April. The deception was uncovered at council on Monday 12th May when the Lord Mayor sought council endorsement of an MOU that she had signed with the Minister for Housing.

Councillor Chris Harris said that councillors were asked to endorse an MOU where the City and the NSW Government would work together to merely ‘assess the potential of developing new affordable housing units’. However on 29th April the Lord Mayor announced a partnership ‘committing the City of Sydney and the NSW Government to develop affordable housing on a 3.6 hectare site in Glebe’ and further that ‘ the City of Sydney is contributing a site worth about $30M in inner Sydney’.

So in fact we don’t actually have an affordable housing project. We are merely having a look at it with the state government. The Lord Mayor has misinformed the public that the project is a done deal and that the City has committed the land and the truth is that this is not the case.

In addition it turns out that neither the Lord Mayor nor the CEO have the power to bind council on the project or the transfer of the land. This has to be a decision of the whole council. So what we have here is a cheap publicity stunt with the September elections in mind.

Councillor Harris, who is a strong advocate of affordable housing, peppered the CEO with questions about the mooted affordable housing strategy at a 2030 briefing of councillors and staff two weeks before the Easter break and then again at the council meeting on 15th April. On both occasions the councillors were told that an exciting initiative was forthcoming but details could not be provided until the parties agreed. Councillors discovered some scant details of the project in a media release posted to the City’s website on 29th April.

I have since asked the CEO for full details of the number of public housing units to be demolished and how many will be created, how many homes will be affordable and how they will be managed and assurances that initial purchasers will not be able to sell homes later on for a windfall capital gain which will eventually make them ‘unaffordable’. The CEO was unable to provide any of this information because the project is just a media release at this stage, none of this has been worked out and there is no commitment to it.

I think that the manner in which information was withheld from councillors is a disgrace and it draws into question the governance standards of a council that is being run for the political benefit of the Lord Mayor. I also think that to mislead journalists and then the public like this is appalling.

Unlike the Lord Mayor, Councillor Harris will resist political media releases and instead continue to push for a systematic and effective affordable housing strategy in the City of Sydney.