ApartmentsHudson FarrTue 18 Aug 26
Rare Overlay Clears Way for VACCHO’s Collingwood Affordable Homes
A Victorian First Nations organisation has won approval for a 168-home affordable housing project in inner Melbourne using a rarely used overlay to bypass zoning that would otherwise have blocked the scheme outright.
The amendment applies a Specific Controls Overlay to the Commercial 2-zoned site, where accommodation is otherwise a prohibited use.
Rather than pursue a standard rezoning, the Department of Transport and Planning opted for a site-specific overlay tailored to The Victorian Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Organisation (VACCHO).
The development must deliver each of its homes as social or affordable housing, managed by VACCHO or a registered housing agency on its behalf.
Designed by Fieldwork, the 14-storey project at 22-50 Sackville Street, Collingwood comprises 20,518sq m, 10,141sq m of which is space that can be sold.
The project will replace a row of warehouse-converted properties VACCHO progressively acquired from 2023 for about $16.5 million and next to the organisation’s head office.
“Our project is wrapped in culture. We want Aboriginal people and culture to be in the design of the building and the story it tells—that Aboriginal culture is living and evolving and connecting us all,” VACCHO said
For its Design with Country process, VACCHO collaborated with Aboriginal-owned studio Yerrabingin.
Sackville Street is within the Johnston Street Neighbourhood Activity Centre’s Commercial 2 Zone, employment land that the Yarra City Council’s own Spatial Economic and Employment Strategy has twice recommended against rezoning for residential use—in 2018 and in the 2025 strategy update.
Rather than rezone, with risk of residential encroachment on commercial land, the planning department went with the “simplest and most targeted method” of a focused overlay.
The Yarra council’s Planning Decisions Committee backed the amendment on June 23, but not without a fight over commercial floorspace, with the council wanting a fixed employment floor area ratio.
Final conditions now require the level 2 floorplate to be “adaptable” and “capable of accommodating employment-generating non-residential uses”.
The department frames the approval against the plan for Victoria’s housing pillar, which commits the state to “streamline the approval of proposals by formally recognised Traditional Owners and Aboriginal community-controlled organisations”. It also counts toward Yarra’s target of 44,000 additional homes by 2050.
Before ground is broken, VACCHO will need to sign-off on remaining plans and ensure execution of the agreement locking in the housing outcome.
Construction has four years from approval to start and six to finish.
