At long last some sanity is being applied to the massive land release about to occur at West Dapto. The number of blocks will be reduced from 19,000 to 16,000 - but the price per block will also fall by $ 64,000.
This will happen because the state government has removed the up-front housing levies imposed on developers and decided to apply any levies at the time of sale.
It accepts that housing at West Dapto in the $ 320,000 to $ 450,000 mark would not fulfill needs - and would certainly not apply the brakes to house prices generally in the Illawarra.
This action finally draws the whole question of development levies kicking and screaming into the public domain. Levies were introduced years ago to help pay for the government infrastructure needed to service new housing estates.
Obviously new housing needed access roads - and from there the list grew. There was a need for telephone services, street lighting, schools, churches, hospitals, fire stations, bus services - and shopping centres.
Levies to provide these got tacked onto the price of newly released land - but the services were usually decades behind - and in many cases never fully provided
Families faced a choice. Move into a new estate and live in a cultural desert - or pay a little more and live in an established suburb with all the amenities ?
In many cases, councils hoarded the money from development levies and used the interest from it's investment to fund projects that had absolutely nothing to do with the area from whence the money was collected.
The big question is whether those who buy newly released land should have to pay for all the services required, or whether this should be a charge on government and be drawn from the taxes levied on the entire community ?
It seems that government thinking is slowly moving to that point of view !
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