5200 student rooms to 500 residential dwellings approved in the same period. Would be interesting to see occupancy statistics on this. Student accommodation was always unaffordable when I was at uni – though I don't think they were targeting domestic students. At the very least I think the Uni should be looking at reserving some of these for students who have mandatory work placement over long periods and providing support to students that way.
Posted by zerotwoalpha
16 Comments
Sounds good assuming it about these shady businesses like Scape, then you realise its just a form of NIMBYism
As a country that focuses so much on international students we do an extremely poor at looking after the,
Student housing, meal plans etcs should be massive. This should also be inclusive of locals
Banning the building of student accommodation forces students to compete with everybody else in the regular housing market. That forces prices _up_ across the board.
It’s good news for homeowners, bad news for everybody else.
Just another day of councils making the housing crisis worse
Reminder that Randwick council tried to block housing in a neighbouring council.
University has been there longer than most locals..
It’s good only if they actually approve normal dwellings too. As a former student who has stayed in one of these student accommodations: fuck them. They’re a massive scam.
That being said they’re still necessary for first years and whatnot who are just adjusting to live away from home and don’t know how to find flatmates and rental yet.
Considering the way they build student accommodation, 5,200 student rooms would be equivalent to about 2,000 normal apartments.
But considering it’s the Not in Your Backyard council, I wont give them the benefit of the doubt.
Part of this is probably down to the regulations on the building codes for student accommodation being really shit, minimum room sizes are less than liveable, rules on bathrooms, laundry facilities, kitchens. Basically developers use it to avoid compliance with liveability and cram way more people into their development. So in areas like Randwick they don’t bother building new apartments when they can get student accommodation in and sardine can everyone.
If they aren’t used by students, such as if we don’t have the university degree mill going constantly. The dwellings are basically unliveable for regular people.
So the backstory here is that this is almost certainly the Councillors of Randwick Council chucking a dummy spit because of a previous DA for student accommodation that Randwick Council did not support and was approved by a planning panel. That DA was for the construction of student housing on land that the University manages/owns, currently being used for carparking.
That DA, [DA/168/2023](https://www.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/planning-panel/iglu-campus-student-accommodation) was approved by a local Planning Panel in September 2024 despite Council’s objections (and also the objections of the National Institute of Dramatic Art)
[On the 17th June 2025](https://randwick.infocouncil.biz/Open/2025/06/OC_17062025_AGN_3998_AT.PDF), Council considered a report on “Randwick Junction Planning Proposal: Gateway Conditions”. The report as written by Council officers carried 6 parts to it, but the report was amended by Councillors to carry a 7th part: *endorse the exploration of an amendment to the planning framework for Randwick Junction Centre to incentivise developments to construct residential dwellings and/or restrict student housing/co-living accommodation;*
[On the 24th of Feb](https://randwick.infocouncil.biz/Open/2026/02/OC_24022026_AGN_4035_AT.PDF), a new report was written, focusing on that 7th part, giving Councillors a range of options regarding student accommodation, leading to the “moratorium on any further commercial for-profit student accommodation in the local government area” mentioned in that article. As part of this Report, council officers wrote the following recommendation for Option 3: Moratorium on co-living development: *Recommendation: Based on knowledge of the Department’s position not to disincentivise the development of accommodation including co living/student housing, it is recommended that Council does not pursue this option*
So this whole thing is being sparked by an amendment squeezed into a report that Council Officers didn’t recommend and had nothing to do with and then the Officers have told the Councillors that the State Government isn’t gonna to support a moratorium so don’t waste your time. and here we are
Sack Randwick City Council.
How dare someone try and build student housing next to (checks notes) a massive university.
WSU is fairly affordable for accommodation, but we’re not talking about WSU when we talk about Randwick obviously. 100aud a week for the cheapest room at WSU last time I checked in case anyone is curious.
Depends upon what they mean by “commercial student accommodation” is it like[ IGLU](https://iglu.com.au/properties/sydney/chatswood/) which directly targets students with assorted options from one bedroom apartments to single room share in apartments of up to six rooms?
[https://iglu.com.au/rooms/sydney/chatswood/single-bedroom-6-share-apt-ch/](https://iglu.com.au/rooms/sydney/chatswood/single-bedroom-6-share-apt-ch/)
I look after a wealthy lady in this electorate, she’s one of the types that has generational wealth and too much time in her hands. I am certain she’s one of the bored people attending council meetings on this matter to feel important and trying to stop this.
She has cleaners that come to her house from Blacktown, complains to me that they ‘overcharge’. Ignoring the fact that these cleaners spend 2 hours a day commuting to her. She never had a job in her life because all the money was passed onto her through a family law event. I don’t expect her to understand the struggles of those cleaners. She will one day beg someone to clean her arse when she is no longer able to wipe it herself.
I’m disappointed in another non-Greens council being NIMBY. I was told Greens were worse than others. Funny how the article leaves off the party affiliation when its no longer Greens.
Got letter box dropped the other day because a bunch of villas are planned for a currently empty block in a suburb 30 minutes drive from the Sydney CBD – and some residents don’t want it.
People need places to live, we can’t NIMBY everyone out to beyond Penrith.
If blocked, 28 bedrooms over 8 villas, won’t exist. 28+ people or 8 families will be denied the ability to live in Sydney.
I think people are angry at the wrong thing here including Randwick council
UNSW changed about 20 years ago and it became much more of a business and less of an educational
Institution. They saw big dollars in international enrolments and so started to cater to a huge international cohort, who paid through the roof to get a piece of paper at the end.
This created a huge demand for student housing. UNSW built some on campus. Others came in to build it off campus. It’s needed – but it’s only needed in this way because of UNsWs business model.
The only ones paying the abhorrent prices for scape etc are international students. It’s a money grab that starts with the university.