Mayor reveals urgent need for city housing

Mayor Gary Brennan has revealed his concerns over a lack of social housing in Bunbury following a group of residents filing a petition against a new development.

Mr Brennan told theBunbury Herald there was an “absolute shortage” of crisis and transitional accommodation and it was unacceptable the city had so many people sleeping on the streets.

The comments come as a group of residents last week filed a petition signed by 106 people opposing a social housing complex development at Forrest Avenue in Bunbury.

The AccordWest development proposes four social housing units to cater for young families and a second stage to include transitional accommodation to cater for six teenagers aged between 16 and 19 with a live-in caretaker.

The petition claims the development does not meet State and local government planning schemes, regulations or policies and information about the affect of the development, including character of the area and social impact, was not provided.

However, Mr Brennan said some of the concerns raised by residents were not valid.

“We need to focus on the town planning merits or otherwise of the application, not the issues that have been raised by some of the objectors,” he said.

“The town planning issues are, ‘is that type of land use permissible on that land’ — well it is.

“To object on the lines of these people are ex-prisoners, there could be an increase in crime, there could be all sorts of things happen...they’re not valid town planning reasons to object.”

AccordWest chief executive officer Neil Hamilton said the development was a good commitment by the organisation which had completely funded the $3 million project.

Mr Hamilton said the organisation specifically bought the land for the development because of its close proximity to AccordWest, the Housing Authority and shops.