The Retirement Living Council (RLC) welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback to the Property Developers Bill 2023 (the Bill).
The RLC is the national peak body for Australia’s retirement living sector, championing policies that deliver age-friendly homes and better services in retirement for the 250,000 older Australians who call one of these communities ‘home’.
The RLC sits within the Property Council’s national advocacy team and is the most powerful voice of the sector, representing for-profit and not-for-profit owners and operators of retirement villages and seniors’ living communities.
Retirement Villages are governed by the Retirement Villages Act 2012 and provide affordable accommodation and care for Territorians over 55.
The number of people aged over 75 in ACT will grow by 20,000 by 2040 to 48,000 and there is an acknowledged supply crisis across the territory.
Regrettably, the 2022 Retirement Living Census found that the three-year development supply pipeline of retirement units in the ACT fell by more than half to 234 dwellings compared to the previous forecast of 569 dwellings.
It is therefore imperative that village owners are supported to provide more accommodation to the growing cohort of older Territorians.
Unlike other forms of residential development, retirement village developers and operators continue to own and maintain the property post development, providing a lease or license to occupy to residents.
We therefore submit that exemptions to the legislation should be made to accurately reflect the sector.
While the RLC is supportive of measures designed to improve building quality and promote transparency within the development sector, we believe such measures are already ‘baked into’ the retirement village operational model, with high levels of accountability to the residents who occupy the dwellings within a village.
