The new Housing Minister Clare O’Neil met with her state and territory counterparts yesterday.
Too early to hope housing ministers are discussing the easy wins – including growing our retirement communities sector.
Housing choice at different stages of life has been a major missed opportunity over the last few decades.
Retirement communities are a great way to live. They are one of the oldest and best accepted ‘user pays’ model, with on-market vacancy below five per cent across the country. They aggregate government and community service delivery, especially around healthy ageing.
They delay entry into aged care, helping save taxpayers almost $1 billion in health care costs.
Launching Retirement ready at a Ryman community in Essendon last week, Daniel Gannon and our Retirement Living Council team put the reform case powerfully:
The number of Australians over 75 years old will increase by 85 per cent over the next decade.
67 per cent of development applications for retirement village developments take more than 365 days to complete
23 per cent of DAs take more than 730 days. NSW is the recalcitrant with 33 per cent exceeding the two-year timeframe
70 per cent of industry professionals believe council assessor’s understanding of the retirement and seniors’ housing product is poor to very poor … after 60 plus years as a recognised housing type.
The Retirement ready report card critiques planning systems where necessary. Equally, it offers practical solutions and policy outcomes to help states and territories do better by their communities.
As our RLC Executive Director Daniel Gannon said: “It’s now clear that planning systems aren’t ‘retirement ready’ at the same time that 710,000 Australians are preparing to retire within the next five years.”
Lastly, we need to expand the eligibility threshold for Commonwealth Rent Assistance to encourage more older Australians to rightsize which in turn helps young homebuyers.
The education campaign continues.
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Next week: getting the balance right with Purpose-Built Student Accommodation