The City of Sydney once built and managed public housing across the city, but now says it’s no longer Council’s job. Together, we can change that. By using its large accrued cash investments, council can sustainably invest to directly deliver affordable housing for low-income families, essential workers, artists, teachers, nurses, retail and hospo workers, garbage collectors and more. Council can protect traditional affordable housing like boarding houses that we are losing in our city. 

City of Sydney has the longest running affordable housing scheme of any council, collecting a small amount from private development. 

Yet decades of council affordable schemes have delivered only 1% of affordable housing. And we have less public housing than ten years ago. 

With over $750 million cash sitting in reserve, and hundreds of millions on dollars in commercial property investments, City of Sydney is the wealthiest council in NSW - and wealthier than it has ever been. 

At a time when housing is more expensive than it has ever been, and the community is struggling, council has a responsibility to take much stronger action. 

The Greens fully-costed plan would see Council sustainably invest in housing, to provide affordable, secure homes to thousands of people living in our community. 

Our plan would generate Council a slight profit, with all proceeds being reinvested to maintain existing homes and also build new ones, so that overtime the City of Sydney can provide more and more affordable, accessible housing.

We know that this can work - Other, poorer neighbouring local councils in Sydney are already building or buying housing. 

International cities like London and Paris council’s use similar models to deliver affordable housing and the results speak for themselves. In 2023 almost half of new housing delivered was public or affordable, compared to the 1% of the City of Sydney.

An expanded Greens Team on the next term of Council will build on the housing reforms we have delivered to date, by:

• Making developers deliver a minimum of 30% affordable housing on-site at all new developments
• Introducing a vacancy levy on empty homes, forcing investors to sell or rent and freeing up thousands of new homes for those in need
• Requiring all new homes built in the City of Sydney be fully accessible 
• Delivering more council-owned, artist live-work studios and co-ops, and more 

Read more about our achievements on the current term of Council.