The apartments we had to have but nobody wants

A damning indictment of the move to high rise apartments is to be found in the Sydney Morning Herald of October 2-3, page 9. "Even free furniture is not tempting buyers."
Apparently after destroying the character of much of once-beautiful Ku-ring-gai to meet the government's insistence on provision of masses of new apartments, the only flaw in the government's plan is that many of those new apartments remain empty! The expected rush of baby boomers wanting to downsize from their empty nests to smaller premises without the hastle of a garden has just not materialised.
One commentator reports that sales have mostly been to "overseas buyers looking for investment." Such buyers mostly just want to park money in Australian real estate, and often aren't very worried if the property can't be rented. An apartment can be left empty without drawing objections from neighbours, whereas an empty house needs at least to have the garden tended. And of course putting a tenant into a small apartment invites damage and loss of value, because tenants aren't as caring as those who rent a house.
It is interesting to go back through the history of the Ku-ring-gai government-forced development. An article by Sue Wellings in The Age, 14 December 2009, predicted exactly what the SMH now reports. She wrote a well reasoned explanation of why she thought the demand just was not there for the apartments the government says we have to have.
So is that what will happen to Beecroft Shopping Village? Is Hornsby Shire going to destroy our lovely village atmosphere by building multi-storey dwellings, only to find that they can't find people to live in them?
Great policy!