Draft Local Housing Strategy released

The draft Orange Housing Strategy has identified growth options into the second half of this century.

The strategy, which will be open for public comment from next week, considered the existing supply and demand, population growth, water security, changing demographics, environmental constraints, household sizes and how infrastructure can be connected to proposed new housing sites.

Housing strategies and getting the mix right are critical to how cities develop and how to ensure Orange continues to thrive. The strategy also aims to relieve pressure in the housing sector.

Council CEO David Waddell said there had been a lot of work to date to get to this point but the journey was far from over.


GROWTH OPTIONS: The Orange Housing Strategy: Locations for assessment site map.

“With such transformative strategies there is bound to be a variety of views and we want to hear from the community between now and next February when the exhibition period ends,” Mr Waddell said.

The draft strategy targets concentrated sites rather than have development on all the urban fringes of the city. This ensures the growth is sustainable and can be feasibly serviced with roads, sewer and water and has good connections to employment, education, health and recreation opportunities.

The draft strategy strategies encourages in-fill development but it also proposes growth on the urban fringes.

The draft Orange Housing Strategy will go to a council meeting next Tuesday with a recommendation to exhibit the strategy until February 2022. The aim of the strategy is to create a stock of land available for housing with a 20 year horizon.

“This strategy meets our growth needs for people seeking to share what locals already know; we live in a great city. It needs to support the diverse and changing needs of the Orange community,” Mr Waddell said.

“People often think about people relocating to Orange as driving our housing needs. And this is a significant part of the story. There are also those kids in primary school in Orange today that probably aren’t thinking too much about where they might live and work in the 20s. We are looking ahead for them to make sure they have a choice to put down roots here.”

The draft strategy notes an existing potential of appropriately zoned land for 3841 lots, providing approximately 15.8 years of supply.

The draft strategy identifies eight new candidate greenfield sites and potential to expand the villages of Spring Hill and Lucknow and some potential around Spring Terrace. The anticipated additional supply from these areas is approximately 4601 lots or about 18.9 years of supply.

The existing stock and the proposed expansion sites takes the supply availability through to 2055. The strategy will need updating periodically to maintain a 20 year horizon.

A key considerations of the draft strategy is water security and how it can meet the needs of a growing population.

Significant progress has been made on water security in recent years with raising the Suma Park Dam wall, stormwater harvesting and regional pipelines. As the city grows there will be more work to do.

The Orange Integrated Water Cycle Management study indicates a population of 60,000 can be sustained. Based on the lot yields contained in the draft Orange Housing Strategy a population of 52,000 people in 2041 is attainable. The 2016 Census population for Orange was 40,344 and that has been the starting point form the analysis.

The eight new proposed greenfield sites are:

The covering report and the draft strategy to go before next week’s Council meeting can be found here.

The draft strategy will also be part of an on-line consultation on the Orange YourSay site and face to face community forums if COVID-19 regulations permit.

/Public Release. View in full here.