'We're being priced out of our own city': Ballarat residents speak up on housing crisis

Renters, long-term homeowners and community advocates gathered at the Ballarat Community Health centre on Howitt Street last Tuesday night to voice mounting frustration over housing pressures that many say are fundamentally altering the character of the city's established suburbs. The meeting, organised by housing advocacy group Homes for Ballarat, drew more than 80 residents — a turnout that organisers described as the largest they have seen in three years of running community forums.

The timing is not incidental. Victoria's revised Housing Statement targets, released by the state government in late 2025, require Ballarat to absorb significantly higher residential density along its main transit corridors. Lydiard Street North, Sturt Street and the Sebastopol main road have all been flagged as priority infill precincts under the City of Ballarat's draft Housing Strategy, which is currently open for public submission until August 15. Meanwhile, regional rental vacancy rates remain historically tight, and affordability pressures that were once considered a Melbourne problem have firmly arrived in the central highlands.

Rents rising, stock shrinking

The numbers are stark. According to PropTrack's June 2026 regional data, the median weekly rent for a three-bedroom house in Ballarat has reached $430 — up from $340 in June 2023, a 26 percent increase in three years. The rental vacancy rate sits at approximately 1.2 percent, well below the 3 percent threshold economists generally regard as a healthy market. First-home buyers are faring little better: the median house price across the city crossed $580,000 in the March 2026 quarter, according to Real Estate Institute of Victoria figures.

Residents at Tuesday's forum described the practical consequences. Several spoke of being issued lease-end notices after landlords sold investment properties, leaving them scrambling to find comparable housing in the same school zones. Others, particularly in the Lake Gardens and Alfredton areas, described watching boarding houses and dual-occupancy developments appear on formerly single-dwelling blocks with, in their view, minimal neighbourhood consultation. One submission read aloud at the meeting described a Wendouree West street where four rental households had turned over in the past 18 months, eroding what the resident called the social fabric of a suburb that had long housed working families and retirees on fixed incomes.

Homes for Ballarat has called on the City of Ballarat council to mandate affordable housing contributions — a minimum 10 percent of dwellings in any development above eight units — as part of any revised planning scheme amendment. The group is also pushing for the council to fund an independent housing affordability officer within its planning directorate, modelled on a similar role established by the City of Greater Geelong in 2024.

Council's next steps under pressure

The City of Ballarat confirmed this week that it received 214 formal submissions on its draft Housing Strategy during the first round of consultation, which closed in May. A summary of those submissions is due to be tabled at the July 22 council meeting at Town Hall on Sturt Street. Councillors are expected to vote on whether to proceed with a planning scheme amendment — a process that, if approved, would then require sign-off from the Victorian Minister for Planning before any changes take effect.

State housing policy has become an increasingly charged backdrop. Premier Jacinta Allan's government is pressing councils across regional Victoria to demonstrate compliance with Housing Statement density targets, with funding for local infrastructure projects informally linked to demonstrated progress on planning reform. For Ballarat, that creates a difficult balancing act: resisting infill risks losing leverage over state infrastructure investment, including the long-running campaign for upgraded regional rail services and capital funding for Ballarat Health Services' redevelopment at Drummond Street.

Residents who want to make their views known still have time. Public submissions on the draft Housing Strategy remain open via the City of Ballarat's website until August 15, and the council's planning team is holding two more drop-in sessions — one at the Sebastopol Library on July 16 and one at the Ballarat Library on Doveton Street North on July 23, both from 4pm to 7pm. Homes for Ballarat is also running a free submission-writing workshop at Ballarat Community Health on July 10 for residents who want help preparing formal responses.