“It’s not just the buildings, high-density neighbourhoods make life worse for the poor.”

While Shelter NSW does not assert that high-rise living is, by definition, unsuitable for lower income people, it is well understood that the downsides of this type of living are most keenly felt by that cohort.  

This provocative sub-heading above was the tagline of some older Shelter NSW research commissioned in 2017 – the Equitable Density Series: The-Building-ScaleThe-Neighbourhood-Scale and The-Metropolitan-Scale.  

With a concerted push for more high-rise living in NSW we see it as having even greater relevance now – especially for the large number of low-income people who are and will live in these types of buildings.  

Earlier this month, our Principal Policy Officer Cathy Callaghan was delighted to be part of a panel at the Housing Hack hosted by The Fifth Estate. Besides the usual pitch for (much) more and better social housing Cathy (pictured below) took the opportunity to ask another panel that included architects and developers what they considered to be the particular needs of the many thousands of low-income people, many ageing or living with disabilities, living in high-rise and often paying the price of energy-inefficient dwellings. 
 
It’s clear that NSW needs to hold the line on important amenity standards for apartments – not relax them.Â