Sydney's worker bees will get inner-city homes

Cleaners, bus drivers, police, nurses and other key workers on modest wages will be first in line for new flats planned for the inner city, under a Government plan to save important workers from being priced out of the inner-city property market.

The Premier, Morris Iemma, and the Lord Mayor, Clover Moore, yesterday unveiled a $260million plan to build 700affordable housing apartments on two sites in Ultimo, in the state's biggest effort yet to provide homes for the city's worker bees.

An Ultimo public housing block owned by the Department of Housing will be bulldozed to make way for some of the new flats, with the remainder to be built on the City of Sydney's works depot in Bay Street. The council will hand over that land plot, worth $30 million on the open market, to the Government on a long-term lease. The flats are expected to be finished by 2013.

"It's an exciting partnership with the City of Sydney on affordable housing to ease the pressure on working families and battlers getting into their first home," Mr Iemma said. "This is the Government intervening in the private market to affect the price."

Cr Moore said that many key workers work irregular hours and need to live close to their jobs.

"That's the nurses, the police officers, the cleaners and the bus drivers," she said. "This project could become a model for other local government areas."

About 130 public housing tenants living in the existing block will move into the proposed apartments. Some of the flats will be rented out to Aboriginal people and welfare recipients, while others will

be set aside for the key workers, who are low- and moderate-income earners in emergency services and the service industry. Some apartments will be sold at below-market prices to people on low-to-moderate incomes.

Bob Pritchard, the president of the Police Association of NSW, welcomed the news but said the devil will be in the detail.

"We have a number of police who work in the inner city who can't afford to live here. They are travelling from as far away as Newcastle and the Central Coast to do their shifts," he said.

An artist's impression of the redevelopment.

Source: www.smh.com.au/news/national/sydneys-worker-bees-will-get-innercity-homes/2008/04/29/1209234862839.html