CANBERRA, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- Australia's second largest state is unprepared for an upcoming population boom, the Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) has warned.
In a report released on Wednesday the UDIA said that despite record levels of housing development, Victoria has had a housing shortfall of 9,000 properties in the past two years.
It said that if the trend went unchecked it would lead to an under-supply of more than 50,000 houses by the year 2020.
Australia's leading demographers have predicted that Melbourne will surpass Sydney as Australia's biggest city by 2035.
Danni Addison, chief of the UDIA in Victoria, said that governments on federal, state and local levels had failed to properly plan for the population boom.
"The worrying thing is that we have a population growth forecast that is constantly growing and has constantly been under-represented by government agencies and even the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)," Addison told Australian media on Wednesday.
"So there's a mismatch between the population that has been forecast, what we've planned for and what we're actually delivering.
She said that parts of the community who are fighting against medium- and high-density development must accept that it is the new norm.
"The lesson here for industry, government and community is to wake up to the fact that population growth is happening, it's not something we can stop or change or move elsewhere and we really need to plan better for it," Addison said.
"What the industry really needs to do is have that conversation with the community and say this is something Melbourne has to deal with as a whole community, not just parts of Melbourne."
