Friends Of Lorne

The Committee for Lorne (CfL) led the field with Accommodating Lorne’s Future, a report canvassing a range of different options. As well, you’ll see that they consider retirees, wanting to downsize.

The community conversation began with our first online Community Meeting/webinar on 5 June 2023 organised by Friends of Lorne. This is described below, along with details of a second on line meeting in September 2023 when we heard about a Community Lands Trust being established in Qld to develop worker accommodation. As of July 2025 the community is engaged in dialogue with the Surf Coast Council about best use of $50,000 to develop housing options in Lorne. By the end of 2025 we came with two solutions. One is to build smaller sized accommodation on public land. The other is to offer Land Tax Exemption (or discounts) for home owners who put their property onto the long term rental market for key and essential workers for 2-3 years.

Yes but who would want to give up their holiday home and their short term rental opportunities? Hardly anyone we guess. But that is OK.  We only need 5% of home owners to do this and it would yield us 23 properties. That makes a big difference when you think about the teachers, police, health workers, and emergency workers that have to live outside of Lorne currently.   Plus we’re told that there are people reluctantly selling their properties right now because of land tax.  So this solution offers a win-win. The property owner does not have to sell. The teacher gets to live locally. Hooray.

Get in contact at committee@friendsoflorne.org.au to get more details and receive updates. We are still working up the details of this could work and we appreciate the help.

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The remainder of this page presents key events in chronological order starting June 2023.

You can read Penny Hawe’s (Friends of Lorne) outline of the meeting purpose.
Penny Hawe remarks

And Cr Gary Allen’s outline of the work so far and what we want achieve
Cr Gary Allen’s remarks

Leon Walker, for the Lorne Business and Tourism Association outlined recently tried solutions for accommodating seasonal workers which are working well (e.g., using the caravan parks at discount rates) but the main long-term issue is making Lorne affordable for the year-round workers and young families.
Leon Walker’s remarks

Cr Libby Stapleton outlined the progress of Aireys Inlet Affordable Housing project. They have a site and are now selecting a developer and launching a design process –
Lorne Housing Solutions Cr Stapleton slide show

Assoc Professor Louise Crabtree-Hayes (Western Sydney University) explained Community Lands Trusts (CLTs) to us. The CfL report recommended that Lorne establish one of these.
Assoc Professor Louise Crabtree-Hayes slide show.  

A key message that came through is that the state and local government funding made available for affordable housing (like at Aireys) comes with conditions associated with it. It must target people with a particular income level (more on this in the Your Questions Answered LINK BELOW). CLTs, on the other hand, can be designed to cater for a higher income bracket (for whom, nonetheless, homes are still unaffordable). We don’t need to force a choice between these solutions. What with the ideas Leon was listing, the Shire’s experience at Airey’s Inlet, and the possibilities outlined by Louise, we could choose multiple solutions.

Indeed, in his remarks at the end John Higgins from the Committee for Lorne suggested that we start to develop working groups to check out different options, in parallel. We could then report back and compare progress. After we have used the webinars/on-line meetings to educate ourselves about options and learn from other communities, we may need some face-to-face meetings to consider, deliberate and plan.

Based on the questions in the meeting, we have put together Your Questions Answered. They cover things like eligibility, using the hinterland, the number of people needing to be housed and so on.

One participant asked about (spare) land availability in and around Lorne. Options are being explored. But it was also pointed out that there are CLTs and ways of financing home purchase and/or rentals for key and essential workers that don’t require new building on new land. Existing houses already for sale could be made affordable for eligible workers. Check out a Churchill Fellowship report on shared equity schemes.

Meantime – if you have further questions, or information to share, please use the box below. We’ll search out the answers and update Your Questions Answered over time. 

A big thank you to Alicia Hooper, the Housing Officer at the Surf Coast Shire Council who helped with the research for the speakers, the planning, and getting everything to work on the day.  She will continue to work with us over coming months.

As we search out answers to additional questions, we will place them in Your Questions Answered

If you do not wish your comment or question to be published on this site please email us directly at: committee@friendsoflorne.org.au

Our second online community meeting was held on Wednesday 13 September 2023 at 4pm.

Peter Spring is at 4.27. Andrew Paul is at 21.30.

Peter Spring from the Committee for Lorne gave an update on the search for land parcels within the town boundaries held by Council and/or state government, the idea being that one parcel of land could be sold to raise funds that would be used to then create new builds on a second parcel of land.  Glenn Nott from GORCAPA answered a question about seasonal worker accommodation saying that discounted camping spots will once again be made available this year. Andrew Paul from the South Moreton Bay Islands Community Lands Trust (CLT) in Queensland then spoke to us about his experience in establishing Australia’s first Community Lands Trust to make homes perpetually affordable for eligible families. It took him 5 years to build the first house, but he now has the legal, financial and social infrastructure to scale up.  His group is now seeking to purchase existing properties on the open market, to speed things up. Andrew is establishing a website with guidance for other communities to make their own journey shorter and easier than his.  We will put a link to that when it becomes available. Meanwhile, Louise Crabtree-Hayes has recently published research showing that once people understand what CLTs are, they like them, and want to see more of them in Australia.

Check out a summary of what we have learned so far and what lies ahead. https://friendsoflorne.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Lorne-Independent-Oct-2023-p-5-Affordable-housing.pdf

We have written to the SCSC asking that they broaden the scope of their current housing action plan for Lorne to include rental incentives and home equity schemes to assist key and essential workers. With most of our housing stock empty for most to the year it seems daft to keeping thinking that the main priority must be building new.

Did you realise that Lorne had a Community Lands Trust at one time? Check out the announcement here. The CLT had disbanded by October 2023. But that does not mean that people are idle. There are a number of groups exploring various options for Lorne. Let us know if you would like to be more actively involved. Contact us at committee@friendsoflorne.org.au.

UPDATE: 31 MARCH 2025.  A report by Friends of Lorne was presented to a special meeting of the Committee for Lorne on 26 September 2024. It outlines (among other things) some work happening on shared equity financing,  regional worker accommodation grants and overlays to prevent excessive numbers of short term rentals. The report is here. The minutes of the meeting of 26 September 2024 are here. The next meeting was on 5 December 2024. The lead item of business was the support that the Surf Coast Shire Council (SCSC) can give to Lorne in developing housing solutions, using seed funding of $50k. We also began our more detailed investigation of different options. The minutes of that meeting are here.  

Our third meeting was held on Thursday 6 March 2025. You can see the minutes here and the report from SCSC on all the action items for getting some kind of affordable and/or social housing going in Lorne.  You’ll see that the SCSC will be convening a community wide meeting on this in the next 4-6 weeks.  

You will also find minuted that an application for a Regional Worker Accommodation Grant went in from Lorne, but the applicant declined to share the proposal with the Committee for Lorne(CfL)  or have it discussed around the working group table. Nonetheless, at the end of January,  the CfL gave the application an unconditional letter of support.  Friends of Lorne objected to the supply of the letter because the proposal had not been fully shared and  we wanted  a commitment from the applicant for a longer use for workers other than the minimum amount of 5 years that the grant imposed. 

Later, after the CfL had supplied the  unconditional letter of support for a grant to build eight 2-bedroom units, the applicant agreed to a Friends of Lorne arranged public Zoom meeting to discuss the proposal. We were shown a visual for eight separate 2-bedroom units on a large sloping block of land. Unfortunately, the next day we learned that the proposal we had been shown for eight 2-bedroom units was dated January 2020. We also learned that the applicant had put in plans to Council for 19 accommodation units on the same site some 6 weeks prior.

The Friends of Lorne, the Secretary of CfL, and the Chair of CfL, were all surprised to learn about the 19 unit application – not knowing that CfL had possibly written a letter of support for a tip with an iceberg attached. Eventually, after making our concerns known, the applicant revised the plans at Council from 19 units to eight 2-bedroom units. Our biggest concern was the loss of vegetation with the larger development and the possibility that after 5 years it would convert to holiday accommodation, leaving our workers uncatered for once again. 

Meanwhile we made a public submission to the Inquiry into the Supply of Homes in Regional Victoria Environment and Planning Committee by the Legislative Assembly, Parliament of Victoria. We recommended that the conditions of the Regional Worker Accommodation Grants be changed. Specifically, we asked that be available for workers for 20 years, not 5 years.