Wollongong's sold-out Northsea development has been heralded as a game-changer for housing in NSW, bringing together private ownership, social housing and affordable rentals together in the one building.
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But it is a model that has worked successfully overseas for decades, Michele Adair says - just one that Australia has been slow to embrace despite a housing crisis.
"It's the norm, it works perfectly well in every other major city of the world," Ms Adair, the chief executive officer of community housing provider the Housing Trust, said.
In New York City, she explained, every new apartment building or building repurposed into dwellings had to have a mix of tenures, based on the median income for that borough.
"In Toronto city, it is 40 per cent of every new building must be made available for affordable rental for people on low to moderate incomes," Ms Adair said.
London has a target of 60 per cent - and if developers say they can't meet it, they have to show why.
Yet despite countries overseas setting far more ambitious targets than those community housing providers are calling for domestically - Ms Adair says even 20 per cent would make a "huge difference" - Australia is yet to take up such a model.
"It is still fundamentally a lack of cultural and political acceptance and commitment to renting and to tenants," Ms Adair said.
But fewer people are going to be able to buy their own place to live.
Ms Adair described this as a "false dream" that persisted in Australia.
"There are no economic projections from any government at any level in Australia or independent economic analysts that project that home ownership rates in Australia are going to do anything but continue to decline," she said.
She said tax reforms in the 1980s that introduced capital gains tax and negative gearing shifted attitudes away from housing as a fundamental right, to existing as a commodity that was to be traded for profit.
It was up to government, Ms Adair said, to introduce the kinds of policy that would effect cultural change.
But she said it had to be brought in at least statewide, if not consistently across the country, to avoid the loss of investment in particular areas.
Such a policy is known as inclusionary zoning: a planning control by which any development over a particular size must include a certain proportion of at least affordable rentals, if not also social housing.
Ms Adair said research suggested this should apply to all developments - whether they be apartment blocks or residential estates - larger than 15 or 16 homes.
She said pressure from shareholders and a fear that profitability would be damaged because buyers would not want to live alongside people from different socioeconomic groups had prevented developers taking the lead.
A misunderstanding of who needed affordable housing was another issue, Ms Adair said: under NSW rules, a single person outside Sydney can earn more than $87,000 and still be eligible for affordable housing, while a couple with two children could earn as much as $184,000.
But she said Northsea had proven that mixed tenure was not a barrier to sales, selling 75 per cent of dwellings in its first weekend.
Northsea has 18 social housing units for people on very low incomes, managed by the Housing Trust on behalf of the NSW government, and nine units purchased by the Housing Trust for affordable rentals.
There are another 38 private homes, including the penthouse which sold for $2.5 million.
Ms Adair said a mixed tenure building in Toronto, close to the CBD in a desirable arts and entertainment district, increased in value from $545 Canadian per square foot to $1450 in a decade.
"Of course, it takes time for confidence to build and for things to become the norm. But it's a safe bet," she said of investment in such housing.
Ms Adair said inclusionary zoning was something that would have to be phased in because developers and builders had entered into existing projects with certain expectations in mind, and those had to be respected.
She welcomed planning changes from the NSW government that give developers access to a fast-tracked assessment process and greater height and floor space ratios, if their large developments include at least 15 per cent affordable housing (or 10 per cent, for certain smaller developments).
But Ms Adair said this did not go far enough and starting within five years, it needed to be introduced everywhere.
"What we are living with now is the result of policy failures and structural distortions in the residential property market under governments of all persuasions going back 30, 40 years," she said.
"And the only way to change it is through structural change, and that's got to be through regulation and mandating of reforms."
Natalie Croxon
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
Reporter at the Illawarra Mercury, mostly covering social affairs. Previously of the Bendigo Advertiser, Northern Daily Leader and Quirindi Advocate. Our Watch award winner.
