Earlier this month, the NSW government announced the Hunter would become home to a $12 billion train manufacturing facility in either Teralba or Broadmeadow. The project is expected to employ up to 780 workers during construction and create 550 ongoing jobs.
Ten days later, the state and federal governments unveiled plans for two large-scale industrial precincts at Muswellbrook and West Wallsend, expected to support 7000 jobs in renewable energy, advanced manufacturing and warehousing.
Add the proposed high-speed rail line to Sydney, and major redevelopment plans for Broadmeadow and Honeysuckle, and it looks like boom times ahead for the local economy.
But while things might look good on paper, there is a catch.
A job is only useful to a region if someone can actually take it, and that means having somewhere to live. This is where the story gets more complicated.
The Hunter Regional Plan initially said the region would need around 100,000 extra dwellings by 2041. But in May of 2024, as part of the National Housing Accord, several councils saw the goalposts shift.
The City of Newcastle, for example, is now expected to deliver 11,000 homes - almost two thirds of its 2041 target - in barely a quarter of the time originally allocated.
Achieving this would mean building at more than twice the rate achieved between 2017 and 2022, when construction costs were at least 30 per cent lower than today.
Ask anyone in the construction industry and they'll tell you the chance of that happening is close to zero.
It isn't just a timing problem, either. Around 2000 approved dwellings in Newcastle haven't even broken ground, and the Property Council estimates another 1500 apartments are held up because of uncertainty over old mine workings under the city.
Like it or not, supply is a product of market conditions and, right now, conditions aren't good.
To its credit, the federal government has recognised mine grouting as a barrier to housing delivery in Lake Macquarie and funded a solution there. But a similar NSW Government fund covering the Newcastle local government area was closed just months before the city was handed its sharply accelerated housing target.
All of this is landing on a region that already has some of the least affordable housing in the state.
Rents in Newcastle are up 50 per cent in five years. The vacancy rate is stuck around 1 per cent, pushing more and more families onto the region's lengthy social housing waiting list which has grown by a further 15 per cent in the last three years alone. The grim reality is that unless something dramatic changes most people on those lists will be waiting years, if not decades.
That's a hard pill to swallow given where investment is, and isn't, going. While state and federal governments are investing heavily in the Hunter's economic future, investment in affordable housing has stalled. The Hunter is yet to receive a dollar from the federal government's Housing Australia Future Fund, and only 5 to 10 per cent of the 3200 homes planned for the first stage of the Broadmeadow redevelopment - just 160 to 320 dwellings - will be affordable.
These challenges aren't unique to the Hunter. Growth corridors right across the country are wrestling with the same mismatch between jobs and housing. But the Hunter still has a chance to get the settings right before the cranes arrive, rather than scrambling to fix it later.
Nobody wants to see the Hunter's momentum stall, and ongoing investment from state and federal governments will be critical to keeping it going. But growth like this only works if housing keeps pace and making that happen is going to require more than wishful thinking. A credible plan would mean investing in the infrastructure required to fast-track development in Broadmeadow, resolving the mine grouting standoff once and for all, and lifting social and affordable housing supply so workers aren't priced out of the region they're helping to build.
At the end of the day, all the investment in the world won't matter if there is nowhere for the workforce to live.
Martin Kennedy is Group Executive Manager Marketing & Public Affairs, Home in Place
