Vehicles will be prevented from entering and exiting the West Village construction site on Wednesday morning when local residents blockade driveways to call for affordable housing and sustainable development in the inner-city.
Residents are frustrated that Deputy Premier Trad approved the West Village developers to build nine towers of up to 20 and 22 storeys when the site was zoned for a maximum of 15 storeys.
“The Deputy Premier’s reason for allowing the developers to exceed the neighbourhood plan was that their project wouldn’t be profitable if they were restricted to the 15 storey height limit. I find that justification extremely concerning – we shouldn’t be giving big developers special treatment just so they can make larger profits,” Councillor Sri said.
“The Deputy Premier has given the developers an early Christmas present. She had the legal power to restrict them to 15 storeys and 80% site coverage – why didn’t she at least insist that the developers provide some component of public housing or affordable community housing in exchange for building up to 22 storeys?”
“We want to see the Queensland government re-introduce inclusionary zoning, so that all developers have to include 10% affordable community housing or public housing as part of every major new development.”
“The property industry’s definition of affordable housing is a joke – genuine affordable housing is housing that is rented out for a maximum of 25% of the tenants’ income.”
Residents aim to blockade for at least two hours, starting at approximately 9:30am.
“It’s important for the inner-city to densify, and I’m happy to see this site develop, but residents should have been given genuine input into how this massive precinct was designed,” Councillor Sri said.
“Local schools are over-crowded, roads are congested and key bus routes are at capacity – I’m concerned that infrastructure isn’t keeping pace with the rising population.”
“There are already thousands of unoccupied and under-occupied properties in Brisbane. We can cater for a growing population by filling empty homes and building medium-density affordable housing without having to approve dozens of highrises.”
“The Deputy Premier has falsely characterised this as a binary choice between tall and sprawl. In fact, cities around the world have been able to densify through human-scale development that benefits all residents, rather than a few multinational developers.”
“We need to ask ourselves who is really profiting from this construction boom. When property values are rising faster than wages, it’s getting harder and harder for young people to buy their first home.”
“The construction boom is not improving housing affordability for people at the lower end of the economic grease pole.”