You need not look too far in the Hunter to see why housing approvals have been falling for two years.
From the Iris Capital redevelopment in the Newcastle city centre to the long-running Minmi Estate saga, major housing projects are being stalled for myriad reasons.
And this is why Chris Minns' latest response to the housing crisis - council-by-council housing targets linked to state infrastructure funding - risks being overly simplistic and, perhaps, unrealistic.
As Lake Macquarie City Council's senior planner told the Newcastle Herald on Wednesday, councils do not control whether developers lodge applications, or whether banks agree to finance projects, or whether material and labour costs render a development unworkable.
Some major Newcastle apartment projects such as The Store, Dairy Farmers Corner and Merewether Golf Club have been slow to get started in a challenging economic climate.
In the case of Honeysuckle HQ, the government's decision last year to insist on 30 per cent affordable housing on the site when the tender process was well advanced has put it back a year or more.
In the case of Winten's huge Minmi Estate, the Hunter Central Coast Regional Planning Panel and Newcastle council have objected at various times over traffic issues.
North of Raymond Terrace, the big Kings Hill housing estate, about the size of Raymond Terrace, has been going since well before 2010, when the state government rezoned it as a priority growth area. The regional planning panel knocked back a subdivision plan for the site in 2022 because of its effect on koala habitat, despite Port Stephens Council support for the project.
It was a similar story in the city centre, where the planning panel rejected Iris Capital's EastEnd third and fourth stages over height and view concerns despite Newcastle council backing the developer's plans.
Wickham's Neufort apartment project fell over after a dispute between the owners.
Just down the road, the Sydney developer hit water when it dug out the car park at the Bowline apartments in January 2023. The building is still not out of the ground.
In fast-growing Morisset, the council and property developers have been waiting two years for a material start on the Mandalong Road upgrade.
Throw in collapsed building firms, unhappy residents, Land and Environment Court challenges, the loss of Newcastle's mine grouting fund, labour shortages, immigration increases, city-regional migration, COVID-19 and countless other factors and you have a recipe for disrupted housing supply.
The government has tried to stimulate the private sector by relaxing planning rules around 37 train stations, including nine in Newcastle, and other measures, but it remains to be seen if developers can join the party.
The Premier is clearly fed up with what he perceives as development-phobic Sydney councils. He wants to publicly hold councils to account for not pulling their weight on approvals while offering them the carrot of more funding if they succeed.
It is not clear the Lower Hunter councils have been dragging the chain on housing supply, yet three of them have been handed 2029 targets between 30 and 100 per cent higher than the number of dwelling completions in their LGAs in the five years to 2022.
The 10-year-old Hunter Expressway has shown how public investment can generate housing. Mr Minns must listen to calls for more key projects to be funded if he wants to hit his targets in the Hunter.
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