Wollongong Lord Mayor Tania Brown, through council general manager Greg Doyle, has written to NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces Paul Scully to consider a scheme to incentivise investment in residential aged care on the NSW South Coast.
The Mayor said the lack of available aged care beds in Wollongong, 85km south of Sydney’s CBD, was “causing significant issues for the health system”.
Between 1 June 2023 until 9 February 2024, Australia's residential aged care sector only grew by 520 new places, The Weekly SOURCE reported.
The Illawarra region in NSW is widely regarded as having one of the worst shortfalls of aged care beds in Australia.
“It was reported that on any given night during winter there are over 150 people essentially living in Illawarra hospitals because of a severe lack of aged care places,” stated her motion tabled in a Lord Mayoral Minute on Monday.
The Mayor added it was not “a very good quality of life” for these seniors to be living in a four-bed hospital room rather than something more appropriate.
“While there are examples of senior housing developments (independent living units) moving through the planning system,” she said, “it is residential aged care beds that are needed to transition older patients who require ongoing care out of the hospital system and into appropriate alternative accommodation.”
The Lord Mayor is pushing for developers to be encouraged to build new aged care beds, via a bonus scheme, similar to the one introduced by the NSW State Government to increase affordable housing stock. In that case, developers who provide sufficient affordable housing are given a height “bonus” that allows them to build beyond whatever the maximum height is in that land zone.
The motion called for the Illawarra Shoalhaven Joint Organisation, a group representing the four councils in the region, to throw its weight behind the move.
The Lord Mayoral Minute was passed unanimously.
