The apartment problem we didn't need to have.

State Planning has known that multiple dwellings have been a problem in suburban settings for some time. In 2015, they put out a Bulletin, offering a fix for this problem. The question is, why didn't the City of Joondalup run with it?

Since Housing Opportunity Areas were rezoned, via Amendment No. 73, back in February 2016, Multiple Dwellings (apartments) in inappropriate settings have been a one of the major issues. Even the City's Planning Department realised that such apartments were not a good idea, as highlighted in their own Local Housing Strategy document.

"The street system of curvilinear roads and cul-de-sacs do not lend themselves to comprehensive medium to high density redevelopment as experienced in the more traditional grid systems of the older parts of Perth."

The City's solution was to 'prohibit Multiple Dwellings on lots less than 2,000sqm'. However, the City knew that this solution was NOT supported by the Department of Housing or WAPC as outlined in its report to Council in March 2015 and December 2015 and was 'unlikely to be supported by the Minister'. In fact, it had been flagged as not supported as far back as December 2014 and a month prior to Council's vote to progress the Draft Residential Development Local Planning Policy which contained this provision, the City's Director of Planning had met with the WAPC (November 2015) seeking final approval for the Amendment No. 73.

What Joondalup could have put forward instead

Before Amendment No. 73 was approved, back in July of 2015, having recognised that multiple dwellings were becoming a problem for infill areas, the WAPC sent out a Bulletin offering a solution. The solution would seriously restrict the number of multiple dwellings a developer can place on a site, reducing the yield and going some way towards discouraging apartments in areas that are not suitable.

You should note that the State's suggestion is similar to the one that the City of Joondalup is currently contemplating (via a local planning policy), but currently the City is only considering this control measure in cul-de-sacs. Conversely, below is a rough approximation of all the HOA R40 areas where the State's suggested policy would have applied, had the City adopted the suggestion (outlined in purple). This would have protected suburbs against many of the apartments we've been fighting against, including Macedon Place, Craigie; Littorina Place, Heathridge; Chipala Court and Tuart Trail, Edgewater and Davallia Road, Duncraig.

How the State's proposal works

Most of the issues surrounding multiple dwellings are because the rules shift from 'site area' to 'plot ratio'. Let me explain: the R-Codes R20, R30, R60 etc. work to allocating an average site area per dwelling. So at R20, you need an average of 450sqm per dwelling. Which means that you'd need a minimum of 900sqm to subdivide your block. As the codes increase, the area needed reduces. R30: 300sqm, R40: 220sqm, R60: 150sqm etc. This is always the case for single homes and grouped dwellings.

For Multiple Dwellings coded R40 and above however, the assessment moves to 'plot ratio'. This means that instead of having to have a minimum site area per dwelling, developers have a certain percentage of the site that they can give over to living area, with no limit to how small the dwelling is. At R40, you have a plot ratio of 0.6, so as a rough example, if you have 1000sqm, you can give over 600sqm for dwellings. If you give over 75sqm per dwelling, you can put 8 apartments on the site, where you can only have 4 group dwellings.

The idea was to restrict the number of multiple dwellings by making 'average site area' apply rather than than 'plot ratio'. To this day, Stirling has applied this rule, even in areas beside the metropolitan activity centre area of Innaloo. Shown below in the darker beige are all the R40 areas in Stirling. Those shaded areas that have black stripes all have apartment restrictions where yield applies to site area rather than plot ratio.

The City of Joondalup's planning department is currently preparing a Local Planning Policy that can help protect existing HOAs while they come up with a new vision for infill in the City of Joondalup that works for the community. We should all be asking our Mayor and Councillors if the 2015 Bulletin can now be taken into account when finding ways to limit apartments in our curvilinear roads and cul-de-sacs.