At its 29 June meeting, Wollongong City Council endorsed a revised Homes NSW Planning Proposal to rezone the Gwynneville precinct, the streets around Irvine, Madoline, Sidney, Paulsgrove and Hoskins Streets, Leahy Crescent, Spearing Parade and Murphys Avenue, from low-density to R3 Medium Density Residential. The rezoning opens the way for up to 1,200 new homes, with provisions that would see social and affordable housing make up 60 per cent of them.

That single sentence carries the biggest change to an established Wollongong suburb in years, so it is worth being precise about what was decided, what was changed along the way, and what is still open.

What changed after the community weighed in

Homes NSW, which owns more than half the lots in the precinct, originally sought R4 High Density Residential zoning. A seven-week exhibition drew sustained community concern about height and density, and the proposal that came back to the council was amended: R3 Medium Density instead, which the council says better reflects the three to six storey buildings actually proposed. The revised scheme also stipulates that affordable housing make up 10 per cent of private developments in the rezoned area, while sites developed by Homes NSW itself must still provide a minimum of 50 per cent social and affordable housing, as first proposed.

Most of the precinct's existing public housing dates from the 1950s. Lord Mayor Tania Brown put the case for renewal in supply terms: We have the third highest supply of social housing in the state, but a lot of that housing stock was built many, many years ago and waiting lists in our LGA still stretch beyond 10 years.

The part that is open right now: who pays for what

Alongside the rezoning, the council resolved to place two documents on public exhibition for a minimum of two months: a draft Development Control Plan chapter (Chapter D22) and a draft Planning Agreement with Homes NSW.

The DCP chapter is where the lived detail of the renewal gets set: general layout and residential amenity, public open space, walking, cycling and public transport connections, environmental protection and flood management. The Planning Agreement is the money document. It sets out the infrastructure Homes NSW will fund to support the extra population: demolition and land acquisition to expand public open space, new shared paths and safe crossings, bus stop upgrades, and watercourse and landscaping improvements. Those contributions come on top of the developer contributions private builders pay under the council's City-Wide Development Contributions Plan.

Much of the community concern through the first exhibition was less about zoning than about exactly this: what the surrounding infrastructure can absorb. The council says the exhibition will include face-to-face sessions, and that a post-exhibition report will come back to the chamber once submissions are reviewed. We understand the high level of interest in these plans and we're committed to engaging with the community through every step of this process, Cr Brown said.

What happens next

  • The endorsed Planning Proposal goes to the Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure for approval and finalisation, after which the Wollongong Local Environmental Plan is amended to give the rezoning legal effect.
  • The draft DCP chapter and Planning Agreement sit on exhibition for at least two months, with the council to advise when the period formally opens. If you live in or near the precinct, this is the round of consultation that decides streets, parks, paths and crossings rather than broad zoning.

For the wider region, Gwynneville is the largest social-housing renewal on the books, and it now carries a shape no other Illawarra housing project does: a written, exhibited bargain between a state landlord and a council over what 1,200 homes owe the streets around them. How that bargain lands will tell you a lot about how West Dapto, Calderwood and every future renewal precinct gets negotiated.