The Sydney Morning Herald reports NSW State Government is preparing to compulsorily acquire and rezone privately owned land for resale to developers. This puts a very new light on Hornsby Shire's amended Housing Strategy. As soon as Beecroft Village Shopping Centre is rezoned for five story housing, the state could acquire parts or all of the village and hand it over to developers.
Councillor Hutchence recently assured a meeting of Businesses of Beecroft that it would be very many years before new development started, and admitted that the main problem for developers would be the many different small property owners in the village. Now it seems that problem will be eliminated in a stroke!
The SMH article implies that property owners may only be compensated at current land value, and not at the value of the rezoned land! Apparently the developers need that extra profit to make it worth their while to start bulldozing.
According to the article, Frank Sartor tried to bring this in two years ago, but the proposal lapsed after a public backlash. As part of that backlash Gordon Moyes wrote "the government is wrong to pursue a model which weakens the fundamental rights of landowners to their property and deprives them of full compensation. This Bill (the Lands Acquisition (Just Terms Compensation) Amendment Bill 2009), denies the individual of their basic property rights."
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