Sam Papadakis, 37, lives with his mother in a California bungalow in Sydney’s inner west with a huge back yard.
His family’s 1,100 square metre property includes a substantial area of grass which is currently home to a small flock of chickens.
Papadakis’s brother and young family are shortly returning from overseas and would like to build a new dwelling on the Dulwich Hill property.
But the local council is moving to put the house and three neighbouring properties on the heritage list. Papadakis, who is against the listing, says the family are struggling to get clarity on what that will allow them to do.
“People think it’s a housing crisis now but it’s only going to get worse,” he says. “We have 700 square metres of grass and nothing else – so why not free that up for a new home?”
There is widespread agreement that Australia needs greater density in its inner cities, creating infrastructure-rich suburbs where people want to live. But there are disparate views on what is getting in the way of achieving that density.
The recent emergence of the Yimby (Yes in my backyard) movement has focused attention on the wider impacts of heritage laws, which critics say are being weaponised to constrain housing density.
Last month the City of Maribyrnong in Melbourne’s west abandoned its previously imposed heritage overlay protection on almost 900 interwar and postwar homes, which would have restricted building extensions and the installation of street-facing solar panels.
The mayor, Sarah Carter, said councillors had listened to residents’ concerns, stating that “financial impacts on property owners outweigh the benefits associated with heritage protection in this instance”.
The reversal was heralded as a win by Jonathan O’Brien, lead organiser for Yimby Melbourne.
“We hope that councils across the city will see this as setting a clear precedent,” O’Brien says. “Heritage imposes costs on current homeowners through expensive compliance and on future residents through restrictions on the supply of land.”
‘We have to raise the bar’
Melbourne has about 200,000 properties with heritage overlays, making it the most heritage-protected city in Australia.
Heritage laws are usually determined by state governments at the behest of organisations including the National Trust but overseen by local councils. They determine where to conduct heritage studies and hire the consultants to do them.
James Tutton, a director of the Melbourne-based residential developer Neometro, says differences between Victoria’s 79 local councils can lead to costly delays that hinder urban developments.
“Unequivocally, planning controls are essential, as most developers create rubbish,” he concedes. “However … ambiguity and protracted timeframes as they relate both to town planning and heritage impact housing affordability considerably.
“The lack of clarity that extends timeframes and adds to the costs of creating new dwellings – that is a real problem. We collectively need to find a way to expedite that process.”
For the Yimby movement, that means reducing historical and heritage restrictions on land use, among other things. “We have to raise the bar on what qualifies as meaningful heritage, and ensure that all heritage assessments account for the opportunity costs attached to those restrictions,” a recent release from Yimby Melbourne states.
Max Holleran, author of the book Yes to the City, says heritage laws are sometimes deployed as a means to stop or slow growth by residents who want to conserve the feel of the neighbourhood rather than to protect old buildings.
But he says blaming heritage laws for low density is a bit of a red herring.
“Heritage overlays that cover entire neighbourhoods can be a bit of a barrier to growth, but this is far from the biggest hurdle to getting higher-density housing.
“The bigger argument is how much guaranteed affordability will be in new projects and how much money will be devoted to social housing. Compared to that, heritage is a blip on the radar.
“There is absolutely enough non-protected land that nothing old needs to be torn down and no one has to build a nine-storey building next to a terrace house.”
One of the Yimby arguments against widespread use of heritage overlays is that it can lead to changes in zoning laws to further restrict development.
Holleran says such fears are misplaced, but that doesn’t mean we should not revisit current zoning to increase urban densification.
“We are not going to suddenly see more rules that limit neighbourhoods to single-family homes. The bigger issue is a lack of upzoning: the status quo is not what we want going forward,” he says.
‘They can’t have it both ways’
James Lesh, an urban historian and heritage specialist, backs some reform to heritage laws in light of the current housing crisis, but says we need to be careful not to adopt “overly simplistic positions”.
“Mistakes are irreversible and we could end up destroying neighbourhoods and communities in the process,” he says.
Lesh says since the federal government abandoned the responsibility for urban heritage policymaking at the turn of the century, Australia’s heritage landscape has become more and more fragmented.
“This is an area where national authorities working in cooperation with state and local counterparts could make immediate inroads with relatively minimal investment,” he says, citing the need for clear data to tell the public whether heritage listings adequately represent our cities’ history and architecture.
He agrees with Holleran that there are much bigger barriers to urban density and believes that “heritage done well enables both greater density and better neighbourhoods”.
“Decades of medium-density housing development of former industrial areas in Australia’s inner suburbs, such as Ultimo [in Sydney] or Collingwood [in Melbourne], provides ample evidence of heritage density done well,” he says. “In fact, because heritage areas are where people want to live, they are already our densest neighbourhoods, and this positive trend seems likely to continue.”
Justin Simon from Sydney Yimby is not convinced. He says the loudest opposition to new developments generally comes from the richest suburbs with the best amenities.
“The net impact is to push people further out to places that won’t complain. This leads to longer commutes and parents who can’t see their kids during the working week.
“We need to move past the idea that protecting $3m houses on huge lots … in Dulwich Hill is family friendly. The only young families who can afford such dwellings are those with significant inherited wealth.”
Tutton, who lives in the inner north of Melbourne, believes people who live in the inner city need to accept that greater density will require some short-term inconvenience.
“Housing affordability is a social and economic issue, but people often don’t want it to impinge on their lifestyle,” he says.
“The best way for Australia to develop genuine urban density is to build more homes located near infrastructure within inner urban areas. But then those same people say they don’t want a construction site next door – they can’t have it both ways.”
• This article was amended on 13 August 2023 to use the legal name of Sam Papadakis.
