Helping address growing housing issues

The City of Ballarat is seeking public feedback on how it can help address housing issues within the municipality.

With housing becoming a growing area of concern throughout Australia, the City of Ballarat is launching its own Draft Social and Affordable Housing Action Plan.

Now open for public consultation, the document outlines the city’s plan to contribute to social and affordable housing outcomes, with a focus on facilitation and advocacy to address community needs.

The action plan has categorised initiatives into five key themes and roles of the City of Ballarat to support increased supply of social and affordable housing including: Land; Policy and Planning; Community Engagement; Partnerships; and Advocacy and Further Investigations.

The action plan is hosted on the City of Ballarat MySay page, where public feedback can also be submitted via a brief survey that should only take a few minutes to complete.

City of Ballarat Mayor, Cr Des Hudson said although homelessness, social and affordable housing issues were primarily and substantially the responsibilities of Federal and State Government, there was an opportunity for local councils to play a part in addressing the issue.

“We know the housing issue is growing in Australia and Ballarat is not immune from that, so there is an urgent need for action now,” he said.

“While there are some roles that local government play within social and affordable housing, there are also constraints that must be considered along with the main responsibilities that sit with other levels of government.

“This is the first time the City of Ballarat has created an action plan in this field. Although there is always more work that can be done, we are looking forward to doing what we can to help address the housing issue.”

In addition to the MySay survey, there will also be three drop-in sessions held that will be open to everybody where further information can be sought, and feedback given.

The drop-in sessions will be held at the following times:

• Monday 27 May, 9am-12pm | Atrium, Phoenix Building, 25 Armstrong Street South
• Tuesday 4 June, 1pm-4pm | Barkly Square, 25-39 Barkly Street, Ballarat
• Thursday 13 June 4pm-7pm | Sebastopol Library, Albert Street Sebastopol

The City of Ballarat will use feedback gathered from the public consultation and will also be further liaising with service and housing providers to help develop the final action plan.

The consultation will remain open until Sunday 16 June.

The final Social and Affordable Housing Action Plan is expected to be delivered to Council in July.