Shire of Northampton will bring two modular homes to Northampton and Kalbarri to ease housing crisis on staff

The Shire of Northampton has taken the housing crisis into its own hands, preparing two modular homes to be built in a bid to fill staffing vacancies at the council.

Revealed at the shire’s May meeting, one of the quick-build homes will be located in Northampton while the other will be placed in Kalbarri.

The Kalbarri modular home will be located on the Wood Street block which the shire recently acquired, and is set to be turned into workers accommodation.

Shire president Liz Sudlow said the lack of housing in both communities had been “a chronic problem”.

“Lack of housing was becoming an issue before the cyclone (Seroja), but then we lost 44 homes during that period,” she said.

The appeal of modular homes is cited as being the timely nature of the delivery, however a time frame for their arrival at site is not clear.

“We’ve gone with a WALGA (WA Local Government Association) approved builder in Northam . . . a majority of construction is done there and they transport the homes to the site, so they go up quickly,” Cr Sudlow said.

The homes are three-bedroom, two-bathroom houses which are estimated to cost $380,000 each.

“My personal view is, if we’re going to address the housing crisis we need to look to more modest homes,” Cr Sudlow said.