The future of housing in Orange will be discussed at two community forums held at the Civic Theatre at 6pm on Wednesday and 1pm Thursday next week.
The forums come after there were more than 900 visits to Council’s YourSay Orange. The online engagement platform has been collecting community feed-back about the draft Housing Strategy since it was launched last October.
Water security and affordable housing have emerged as key issues in the first round of responses, as well as discussion about more diversity in housing types and the direction of outward growth of residential estates.
Orange Mayor Jason Hamling welcomed community discussion about water security and other issues in the Housing Strategy and encouraged residents to attend the information sessions.
“This draft strategy will put some important directions in place for the next twenty years,” Cr Jason Hamling said. “While the technical information from experts that’s included in the Housing Strategy makes it clear that Orange has a secure water yield of 7868ML a year, which is enough to service a population of 58,000 by the year 2060, these information sessions will help the community to understand what that means.”
“I’d encourage residents to come along with their questions.”
Council staff will provide a high-level overview of the draft Local Housing Strategy, the steps taken to reach this point and where to from here. A brief overview of the various candidate
sites for new housing will be presented and there will be some time for questions and answers.
The one-hour sessions will cover the same information so there is no need to attend both. They will be held in line with COVID-safe rules.
The deadline for formal submissions on the draft Local Housing Strategy is 5pm Monday 21 February 2022.
