Property Council calls for a $58 million tiny town to help ease housing crisis, in pre-Budget submission

The Property Council is calling on the State Government to build 200 tiny homes on Crown land to deal with the housing crisis, in a policy recommendation that has similarities with postwar migrant camps of the 1950s. The council’s recommendation for a $58 million pilot program — which groups tiny homes on large tracts of government land — is one of several recommendations in its pre-Budget submission, which focuses on ways to deal with the housing crisis. While the postwar camps of the 1950s often lacked basic comforts, today’s tiny homes put a modern and luxurious twist on the concept, with new guidelines ensuring quality environmental, thermal and acoustic designs. The Property Council said the State Government needs to step in as governments had during previous housing crises, highlighting the Commonwealth’s efforts with the postwar migrant camps, as well as the State Government’s more recent GROH program in the North West. The council, which will be led by executive director Nicola Brischetto later this month, claims the tiny homes would cost between $50,000 to $100,000 each to construct, and would add 400 bedrooms to WA’s badly undersupplied housing market. “Similar periods of rapid economic growth in the past have been facilitated by high levels of migration, necessitating government-sponsored provision of temporary housing,” the Property Council states in its Budget submission. “For that reason, the State Government should consider a pilot of 200 homes on appropriately identified government land sites.” A spokesman for the council said the tiny homes should be grouped together on “bigger government-owned land” rather than built on single blocks. The migrant camps of the 1950s, including one at Graylands, pictured below, housed 300,000 people across Australia before closing in 1971. In a similar policy, the State Government invested in 450 prefabricated homes from Austria in the 1950s, which were built on government blocks of land around Willagee and surrounding suburbs through the social housing commission. These homes were known as Austrians because of their country of origin, and because of the Austrian tradesmen who were imported to help put them up. Other recommendations in the Property Council’s submissions include calls to relax restrictions on temporary dwellings for a specified period or extending eligibility for multiple ancillaries. It wants the establishment of a unit supported by industry to fast-track investigations into prefabricated homes, similar to one that exists in Queensland. It has called for a top-up of the $80 million Infrastructure Development Fund, which was established in October 2023, and an expansion of criteria to include student accommodation projects. “Based on a report produced by the Property Council, there are 4200 purpose-built student accommodation beds in Perth, which means there are 27 students per bed,” the submission states. “The average across Australia is 19 students per bed. To meet the national average, we need to deliver an additional 1768 beds in Perth.“ The Property Council also wants to reset tax, which it claims is disproportionately higher for apartments than new house and land projects, with apartment projects often being subject to additional stamp duty, and a raft of contributions levied at a local and State government level.