Community & Business
26 November, 2024
New housing and land to help relieve crisis
APPROVALS to open up 70 parcels of land for new homes, together with the five new social housing units available from February next year, marks a major turning point for Mareeba’s housing crisis.
At council’s monthly meeting, Mareeba Mayor Angela Toppin said the new developments were a timely and welcome start for the new year.
Councillors were quick to approve a Material Change of Use application by BTM & S Stankovich Pty Ltd to subdivide an Amaroo lot which had been earmarked for an office and warehouse. Instead, it will enable a low-density housing subdivision of 25 lots on the Merindah Close and Karobean Drive property.
Council heard there had been no submissions on the proposal, and the opportunity to provide more housing development was a straightforward and welcome change of use.
Similarly, councillors welcomed the development application by TW Hedley Pty Ltd to reconfigure a single lot on Ray Road and Rayfield Avenue into 45 rural residential lots to mirror an earlier, adjacent housing development.
The development was approved in 2007 and this application was “modernising and updating the approval” Mayor Toppin said.
“And again, given the housing crisis in our shire it is a welcome addition for dwellings for our residents.”
No issues were raised, and the new subdivision would replicate the previous development. Mayor Toppin said drainage would be looked at “very closely”, but otherwise turning points and water connections posed no problems.
And in a major social housing boost, council announced five new units were being built for seniors.
It is the first time the council’s housing portfolio has increased since 2010 and includes a duplex of two, two-bedroom units, due for completion in February, and a triplex of three one-bedroom units, construction of which begins in May 2025.
All five units will have accessibility standards so tenants will be able to age and adapt in their homes.
“Affordable housing is also a major issue in our shire, and this will, in part, address that,” Mayor Toppin said.
Construction of the new units is being project managed by Mareeba Community Housing Company (MCHC) and funded by the Queensland Department of Housing, with trustee land provided by Mareeba Shire Council.
Cr Amy Braes applauded the “great tripartite approach” behind the development of the new dwellings.
“Many years of work has brought us to the point of being able to add five new dwellings ... for seniors. Then there’s the potential for many more dwellings in the future under the management of the MCHC,” she said.
The five units feature a total of seven bedrooms, representing an 8% increase in the number of funded social housing dwellings for low-income seniors in Mareeba, and the first increase in a decade.
Council has also approved a plan to subdivide and freehold all of its social housing lots with dwellings in order to on-sell at a peppercorn price to MCHC, with costs met by the funded social housing service.
MCHC is already managing the properties for council, so the move will take the next step and make MCHC owner and manager of all properties instead of the council. There would be no change for residents with the new arrangement.
As Deputy Mayor Wyatt explained: “We’ve been divesting, and Mareeba Community Housing has been starting to look after our seniors housing.
“They are going to be able to use those houses as equity and actually be able to, in the future, build more houses as well,” she added
