The Hunter's housing shortage will not be fixed through councils alone and state and federal governments need to step up, a lunch with the five Lower Hunter mayors has heard.
Recently elected mayors and lord mayors of Newcastle, Lake Macquarie, Port Stephens, Maitland and Cessnock addressed a Property Council lunch on November 1.
Lord mayor Ross Kerridge and mayors Adam Shultz, Leah Anderson, Philip Penfold and Daniel Watton were asked about the challenges and opportunities in their local government area for housing and development.
Host Julie Rich asked about the state government's target of more than 30,000 new homes across the Hunter by 2029, including 11,000 in Newcastle, 8000 in Lake Macquarie, 5300 in Maitland, 3900 in Cessnock and 2100 in Port Stephens.
She said the latest regional data showed housing approvals were down "significantly", particularly apartments and medium density.
The Property Council recently conducted research that predicted the Hunter would fall short of its target by 12,000 homes.
Port Stephens mayor Leah Anderson said the targets gave the councils something to work towards, but that she "can't stress enough" how important it is for state and federal governments to contribute infrastructure.
"We've identified lots of great opportunities for infill housing," she said. "But to develop infill housing, we need a whole lot of infrastructure to support that and I don't know if anyone has a look at council's financials, but we're not really flushed with cash, so we do need the support of our government."
Maitland mayor Philip Penfold said houses were "getting beyond people's affordability, both to purchase and to rent, because of the lack of supply".
He said the council was doing all it could to keep up with the housing targets.
"This cannot be done by ratepayers funding for significant infrastructure," Cr Penfold said. "That requires the support of the state and federal government.
"It simply can't be done. If that's what's holding you up, then these conversations not only need to be had by the councils with our state and federal members, but it needs to be had by yourself as well as an industry or the governments need to change.
"Maitland City Council is releasing 1000 residential lots a year and its population growth is expected to increase by 50,000 in 15 years.
"That takes a hell of a lot of work and it can only be done with the support of others."
Newcastle lord mayor Ross Kerridge said he believed there had been a "planning error" that had resulted in a lack of smaller home options for new buyers and downsizers in various parts of the city.
"The traditional approach to new housing has essentially been let's build more three bedroom, double garage houses for mum, dad, two kids and the dog," he said. "That's not what the market needs.
"Obviously we need some of that but the household size is getting smaller, we're changing in our population spectrum.
"We need much more housing that is smaller, is convenient for starters and for downsizers and preferably close to the villages that they have been living in."
Cr Kerridge said villages like Wallsend, Lambton, Adamstown, Hamilton and Mayfield had their own character and charm but most of the housing around them was larger.
"We need to work out how to finesse medium density housing right on top of the villages," he said.
"If we work out how to do it, it will actually improve the amenity of those villages, it will rebuild commercial activity in the traditional village shopping centres and will be a pleasant place to live.
"Particularly for downsizers - I spoke to so many up at Maryland and Fletcher during the election campaign saying 'we want to move, we want to downsize but there's nowhere anywhere near here we can downsize to'.
"That's a sort of planning error. We need to address that.
"We don't need to give up green space because what we've got, we want to hang on to but we need to get density and not necessarily with granny flats because in some ways, that's just only the small Band-Aid.
"You need to go to medium density, of five, six, seven storeys and make it attractive for people to live."
