Council a house divided
A HOBART councillor has blamed the city’s skyrocketing house prices on “anti-development” mindsets held by some of his colleagues in the chamber.
Hobart City councillor Simon Behrakis made his accusation after Monday’s planning committee meeting, where it was revealed that council had knocked back 92 residential developments over the past 12 months.
Ald Behrakis (pictured) said that companies such as Airbnb were often blamed for the housing crisis, but that only 39 short stay accommodation permits were approved during the same period.
“A cynic would say [councillors] are pushing the short stay argument in an attempt to distract or steer the conversation away from their own responsibility,” Ald Behrakis said.
“Their attitudes towards development has been well documented at this stage. What we find in many instances, is that the second there’s an excuse to knock something back, councillors will jump at it.”
Ald Behrakis declined to name the councillors in question citing “fear of getting another code of conduct”, but said the voting record spoke for itself.
He said the council should give developers more time and opportunity to revise their development applications, rather than reject them outright.
Hobart Lord Mayor Anna Reynolds hit back at Ald Behrakis’ comments, saying the current council was in fact one of the most “pro-development councils”.
Cr Reynolds said Ald Behrakis’s characterisation was neither fair nor reasonable, and that he was being selective in his use of statistics.
“The figure he didn’t reveal was that there were 370 residential dwellings approved in that 12-month period, and the 92 rejected dwellings he quotes from were units contained within just three projects, one of which he also voted against,” Cr Reynolds said.
The project in question was a 20-townhouse development on Enterprise Rd, which was unanimously rejected by the council.
The other two projects that council knocked back were a 30-dwelling development in Davey St and a 40-dwelling development on Macquarie St.
In regards to all three cases, Cr Reynolds maintained that there were legitimate heritage, design and planning law reasons to reject the applications.
“We are a pro-development council. We have approved a record number of inner-city apartments in the past 12 months. No other council in Hobart has ever approved more inner-city residential apartments,” Cr Reynolds said.
“However, we do have standards the community expects us to uphold. We uphold planning laws to try and get good results for Hobart, and that means occasionally there may be developments that don’t get approved.”