Rents fell in Austin when they built more homes. Good things are possible when you do planning reform 🏗️

A vast majority of social housing tenants do not own cars. Adding extra car parking, to no benefit to the tenants, would increase the cost of each apartment by up to $60,000. Potentially blowing out the project cost by more than $2.7 million.

Jonathan O’Brien, Lead Organiser for YIMBY Melbourne, accused [the NIMBYs] of being “tone-deaf”, saying the proposal appeared to be compliant, and the apartments would get built.

“Grandstanding against common-sense inner-city housing is just a really embarrassing look in 2026”

Building more homes works

Everyone deserves the choice to stay in their local community as they age.

Diverse housing choices make our neighbourhoods stronger, not weaker.

“Old people don’t need places to live” say local NIMBYs.

Plans to build a mid-rise retirement village on the site of an abandoned building received 51 formal objections in Vermont.

Falling house prices? That sounds like a good housing market to me...

Read the full final report into community consultation practices here:

www.parliament.vic.gov.au/493f7b/conte...

Parliamentary inquiry into community consultation practices finds that local government ‘opt-in’ consultation is biased against renters and the young →

Here's where the Mid-Rise Code will apply:

Should the code prove effective, the government should expand its applicability by expanding the Residential Growth Zone and establishing Activity Centres around more of Melbourne’s train stations.

As we face long-term fuel cost uncertainty, it is critical that we enable more homes to be built near jobs and public transport. In a high-cost era, we cannot afford the long delays of arbitrary processes—and that is exactly what the Mid-Rise Code seeks to overcome.

The common-sense removal of upper-level setback requirements represents a planning ethos that respects evidence over established legacy planning norms, and represents the profession’s willingness to evolve to meet the challenges of today.

The TL;DR of the Mid-Rise Code →

A massive victory in the war against upper-level setbacks!

The Mid-Rise Code offers greater housing certainty for Melburnians. It also winds back one of the most damaging and poorly evidenced planning controls: upper-level setbacks.

Missed the event? Inflection Points has you covered! inflectionpoints.work/podcast

Huge thanks to everyone who made our last event such a success.

We heard from Brendan Coates and Alain Bertaud, followed by a panel joined by Jonathan O'Brien and Matthew Bowes (subbing in for Brendan).

Book your tickets below 👇
www.yimby.melbourne/tour

TONIGHT 👇

Join Alain Bertaud (author of Order without Design) and Brendan Coates (Grattan Institute) to discuss how to make Australian cities work better for everyone.

[Link to tickets in next tweet]

Join Alain Bertaud (author of Order without Design) and Brendan Coates (Grattan Institute) to discuss how to make Australian cities work better for everyone.

Tickets are nearly sold out!

www.yimby.melbourne/tour

Are cities just giant labour markets?

Alain Bertaud argues that cities should be designed by millions of individual trade-offs, not a single planner's estimated "average".

🚨 We're close to selling out again! Get your ticket now!

Join Alain Bertaud (author of Order without Design) and Brendan Coates (Grattan Institute) to discuss how to make Australian cities work better for everyone.

Get your tickets now 👇

www.yimby.melbourne/tour

But this doesn't mean the work is done 👇

Melbourne's planning reforms are nation-leading 💪

Full op-ed on the AFR here: www.afr.com/politics/thi...

💯 bang on the money. Younger Australians are facing worse and worse trade-offs in pursuit of housing affordability.

To reverse intergenerational inequality, Governments must make our major cities accessible again.

Last week, our lead organiser, Jonathan O'Brien, was on A Current Affair. He argued that we should not empower a loud minority to block new homes being built where people want to live.

The evidence is clear that restrictive planning controls are a significant long-term driver of Melbourne’s high housing costs.

Sensible centre-right parties from New Zealand, to Canada to NSW show that centre-right housing policies don’t have to say “no”—they can say “yes and”

The Grattan Institute shows the Activity Centre Program adds 110k+ feasible homes to Middle Melbourne.

Any "alternative" that cuts this capacity will only hike prices and kill housing choice. We cannot afford a net loss in feasible housing. Impactful reform must stay.

YIMBY modelling shows lifting controls in Fitzroy/Collingwood unlocks huge feasibility—the demand is there.

But excluding Carlton, East Melbourne, and West Melbourne creates arbitrary gaps in our city core.