Trio of Melbourne Social Housing Projects Greenlit

Three projects that will deliver more than 800 social housing homes have been greenlit in the Victorian capital.

The housing projects at Barak Beacon, Port Melbourne; Bluff Road, Hampton East; and Banksia Gardens, Broadmeadows will now move forward after winning approval from the state planning minister via the streamlined planning process.

More than 65 per cent of the homes delivered in the projects will be social and affordable housing.

The Hampton East project will have 285 one, two, three and four-bedroom homes with 202 of them as social and affordable housing.

It will be a redevelopment of an existing site and will increase the social and affordable housing by 16 per cent.

It will comprise three and four-storey buildings and two-storey townhouses with 14 specialist disability accommodation homes, a cafe and a communal multi-purpose indoor space.

It will also include 231 on-site car parking spaces and 328 bicycle storage spaces.

▲ A render of the Hampton East project on Bluff Road.

Meanwhile, the Barak Beacon project will have 408 homes with more than 200 social and affordable homes, an increase of 46 per cent in social housing on the site.

Those homes will be across four buildings ranging from 2 to 11 storeys.

There will be 242 on-site car parking spaces and 519 bicycle storage spaces.

Broadmeadows’ Banksia Gardens project will be an expansion of the existing site, adding 120 homes, all of which will be social housing and to be delivered in 2026.

▲ A render of the news homes approved for Banksia Gardens in Melbourne's Broadmeadows.

The Victorian Government said the projects were being delivered in partnership with the Federal Government through its Social Housing Accelerator.

Building projects of this type will help ease the pressure on existing housing stock, according to Member for the Southern Metropolitan Region Ryan Batchelor.

“The redeveloped Hampton East site will help tackle housing affordability by increasing rental housing stock in Melbourne,” Batchelor said.

The latest approvals follow a number of similar social housing projects being greenlit across Melbourne that are now under construction, including projects at Prahran.