Ensuring all Melburnians have access to affordable housing.

Affordable housing is vital to protect the live ability of our city. It supports the diversity of our community and the productivity of our economy.

We have a shortfall of at least 5,500 affordable rental homes in the City of Melbourne. If we do nothing, this will quadruple to more than 23,000 by 2036.

There is no silver bullet that will solve the affordable housing crisis and we can’t do it alone. To be effective in increasing the supply of well-designed affordable rental housing, we need to work in partnership with our community, state and federal governments, community housing providers, developers, investors and researchers.

Through the Affordable Housing Strategy 2030 it identified a number of priorities to address Melbourne’s affordable housing crisis including partnering with governments, industry, peak bodies and community to increase affordable rental housing.

Learn more about the Affordable Housing Strategy 2030.

44-60 Curzon Street

Council have identified the open air car park at 44-60 Curzon Street in North Melbourne as a potential site for an affordable housing project.

The car parking study explored the population behaviour, the capacity of the sites, travel behaviour, historical data and policy aspirations.

Given the impacts of COVID-19 and the difficulties in predicting a return to ‘normal’ transport behaviour, the studies comprised of historical (pre-COVID) car parking data beginning from 2015, aerial imagery using Nearmap, provided the historical data prior to COVID-19 to assess utilisation over the past seven years from 2015.

• The car park study found that 44-60 Curzon Street has a total capacity of 31 parking spaces, comprising 18 all-day spaces and 13 four-hour limit spaces. The presence of these all-day parking spaces (58% of the total) is a reflection that this carpark has historically been managed in support of some of the longer term parking needs of traders or other local workers (rather than the short to medium term needs of visitors and shoppers). Whilst the existing parking occupancy is high – peaking at 87% at 2.00pm on a typical weekday – this high occupancy level is primarily due to the high use of the all-day limit spaces which reach a peak full occupancy of 100% at 9.00am and between 1.00-3.00pm.
• The study found that four-hour limit parking spaces are much less utilised through the day (proportionally much lower than the all-day spaces) – though they reach a peak occupancy of 92% (at 11.00am).

As part of this engagement program, onsite parking observations and interviews will further explore and test the findings from the preliminary car park study.

Council is also undertaking a broader on-street car parking project to align and test any assumptions being made about the availability of on-street parking in the local area.