Moyne Shire doubles down on cabins for key worker housing

The council opened five cabins in the Koroit Caravan Park in October 2022, adding to five cabins installed in the Mortlake Caravan Park in late 2021. The 10 cabins have cost more than $1 million to build, but Moyne's people and place director Jodie McNamara said it was money well spent.

"Our key worker housing pilots have proven really successful, so we're finding that model is something to look at further developing throughout the shire," Ms McNamara said.

"We've found the model is particularly successful within a caravan park."

The cabins are all full of workers who wouldn't have otherwise been able to come to the region. Ms McNamara said the cabins were a flexible form of short to medium-term housing.

"These cabins are often easily and quickly established, and temporary accommodation or a shorter term accommodation arrangement is accepted in caravan parks," she said.

"It's also a sustainable model, because if they're not used for key worker housing they are a tourism product."

Ms McNamara said council-run parks often had space and it wasn't a hard sell to create extra accommodation in a caravan park.

"So it's a good model for us to further investigate and hopefully get some funding for... whether that's funding from the state government or any other funding streams that we can find to (build) a key worker housing product somewhere else in the shire," she said.

Ms McNamara said while the key worker accommodation didn't solve the critically low vacancy rates in the private rental market, it did take some pressure off.

"It has a role to play in that whole housing equation, so if we can do that bit with the construction projects and any industries that are in need of temporary workers, then that's a gap we can plug," she said.

"There are other elements of housing that are either outside council's control or they're being dealt with in other ways, so the key worker housing is the project that we're focusing on."

She said the council was committed to creating similar set-ups in other towns.

"We will definitely look at availability, depending on funding, to share it around, we won't just focus on one particular township, but we haven't selected any others yet."

Council CEO Brett Davis previously said he hoped for another 12 cabins across the shire. The council also has caravan parks in Port Fairy, Yambuk and Killarney.

Ms McNamara said it would start lobbying the state government "as soon as possible" for funding.

IN OTHER NEWS

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can access our trusted content: