Affordable Housing will be investigated by Lismore City Council after a motion put forward by Mayor Vanessa Ekins was carried at last night's council meeting.

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Council will investigate affordable housing and medium density opportunities within the Lismore urban area. A report is to be brought back to council at the July meeting outlining the results at a cost of $50,000 which will be found in the existing budget.

Mayor Ekins said that housing has been a hot topic for quite some time now.

"We have a great housing strategy that has identified that over Sixty percent of our homes are lived in by one or two people which indicates there is demand for smaller houses, maybe medium density units," said the Mayor.

While some real estate agents blame the Lismore City Council for not re-zoning and releasing more land to be built on, councillors were putting the blame squarely on the shoulders of developers.

"This council has zoned a lot of land that is ready to go and some of that land has been there for decades waiting for developers to move on it," Mayor Ekins added, "this motion is about having conversations with those builders and developers so we can find out what the barriers are."

"I am really hoping that one of those recommendations is that we do an Affordable Housing Strategy that is a requirement of the State Government. We need to identify specific areas of land where you can have affordable housing, then we need to develop a contributions plan where funds are put aside to pay for the affordable housing."

The motion drew support from Councillor Elly Bird who said that both Byron and Tweed Councils have declared a housing emergency due to the situation currently facing the Northern Rivers while the Mayor of Kyogle has recently acknowledged a housing crisis and that Lismore Council should also declare a housing emergency.

"Local Government NSW has advocated that the NSW Government should invest $2 billion in social housing that would build an extra 5000 dwellings which still won't really touch the sides of what is needed," Cnr Bird said.

"Not everybody can afford to buy houses and build we need to think about everybody in our community."

Councillor Neil Marks was another to blame developers for "land banking" their re-zoned areas by doing nothing with the opportunity that was approved some years ago.

"We have the unfortunate circumstances where some go through the re-zoning process hoping somebody will come along and buy it, take over the development and that hasn't happened."

The vote for the motion was carried unanimously.

The State Government was next in the councillors' sights as they voted to write to the NSW Department of Planning, Industry & Environment, the Minister for Planning and Public Spaces and the Member for Lismore Janelle Saffin to seek a deferral of the proposed changes to compliance levies and fees. This Mayoral Minute was being discussed and voted on by many local councils in NSW, not just Lismore.

The cost to the Lismore City Council budget is estimated to be $300,000 and when you are in a very tough financial position this is a bitter pill to potentially swallow.

Councillor Adam Guise called it a "despicable act of cost-shifting" by the State Government. Cost-shifting has been a commonly used term over the last 7-days which includes the recently approved Draft Budget for 2021/22 last Tuesday.

Once again, this was a unanimous vote.

The next Lismore Council meeting will be on Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

Read more about housing in the blog section: Affordable Housing to be investigated by councilStuart McConville: Stu’s View from the Loo - Homes are helpful