Property Law Bill Consultation 2022
Submitter: Grounded Community Land Trust Advocacy
Introduction
Grounded is a not-for-profit organisation established to advocate, incubate and accelerate the development of Community Land Trusts in Australia. Community Land Trusts (CLTs) are an innovative housing model that enables property ownership and development to meet community need, and embeds affordability, sustainability and environmental stewardship. We describe the CLT model in Part B.
CLTs are a growing part of the housing mix in the United Kingdom and United States but have not yet taken off in Australia due to a range of factors, one of which is a lack of clarity in legislative settings across property, planning and residential tenancy laws. The current review of the Property Law is a timely opportunity to consider how changes to select provisions could reduce some of the legislative and regulatory barriers to the development of alternative models of affordable housing.
We thank you for the opportunity to make a submission on this important bill. This preliminary submission is necessarily high-level and selective, and recommends the following key reforms::
•Recommendation 1: Introduce a statutory definition of CLTs
•Recommendation 2: Amend section 68 to permit the registration of covenants for public interest purposes
•Recommendation 3: Introduce a new Division to Part 9 of the bill to enable CLT leasehold
Reforms are also recommended to the Planning Act and associated planning scheme policies, and Residential Tenancies Act, and these are touched on in Part D.
We would welcome the opportunity to provide further information to the Department on our recommended reforms or on CLTs more broadly.
