Designing a Future: A Focus on Regional Housing Solutions will feature comedian and television personality Tim ‘Rosso’ Ross. Photo: Committee 4 Wagga.
Committee 4 Wagga (C4W) is set to host a special breakfast event to discuss the future of the residential housing market.
Designing a Future: A Focus on Regional Housing Solutions will feature passionate advocate for architecture and design and celebrated comedian, television personality, producer and host of ABC’s Designing A Legacy, Tim ‘Rosso’ Ross.
The event will include industry experts for a discussion focusing on regional housing solutions, including DevCore Property Group, PRD Real Estate, HIA, Regional Development Australia Riverina (RDA) and Wagga Wagga City Council.
The breakfast event will be held at The Riverine Club on Wednesday 22 November, from 7:30 to 9 am.
C4W chair Adam Drummond said Tim was interested in facilitating the workshop for Wagga.
“He will be referring to some of the research he discovered while producing Designing A Legacy,” Mr Drummond said. “He is also working towards another project that’s to do with regional housing.
“We’ll have keynote addresses from organisations and individuals who will be giving updates on the housing strategy moving forward.
“We’ll also hear from developers (DevCorp) and real estate agents (PRD Nationwide) an on-the-ground perspective of where we are, where we’re heading and what needs to be done to fix the issue.”
Mr Drummond said C4W, HIA, and RDA Riverina will analyse and release the land monitor report.
“The land monitor report goes into primarily land availability in the short-, medium- and long-term future of Wagga,” he said.
A pre-recorded presentation from Member for Wagga Wagga Dr Joe McGirr will also be played in the morning as he will be overseas at the time of the event.
“[Dr McGirr] He will speak about the gap between the State Government and local planning authorities and the challenges of getting land ready to sell quickly without a huge amount of red tape,” Mr Drummond said.
Mr Drummond said the event’s primary focus was finding solutions, not problems and obstacles.
“We’ll be asking questions such as what can we do in a local government planning process to streamline extra dwellings that can come onto the rental market, such as granny flats or land subdivisions?” he said.
“We noticed that in Coffs Harbour, they’re reducing land restriction for dual occupancy to accommodate blocks of land under 800 square metres … a big move for that council to do.
“They’ve also looked at reducing the strain on having so many car parking spaces and moving towards social awareness of environmentally friendly ways to transport and travel around the cities.”
Mr Drummond said C4W will also analyse other local government areas around Australia, looking at similar solutions and implementing them in Wagga.
The problems faced by Riverina are the lack of rentals and affordable housing.
“The issue is that we’ve got plenty of jobs available in the Riverina with industries crying out for talent … when the talent comes here from out of town, they’ve got nowhere to stay,” Mr Drummond said.
“The big issue is making Wagga attractive from a housing perspective so that we don’t have those knockbacks when trying to increase our workforce.
“And now that we’ve talked about challenges and obstacles for about two years, it’s time to let the public know there are solutions on the horizon.”
The Designing a Future: A Focus on Regional Housing Solutions event will be held at The Riverine Club on Wednesday 22 November, from 7:30 to 9 am. Tickets can be purchased via eventbrite.
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