Dubbo Regional Council held an extraordinary meeting on Monday, June 27 to vote on the new delivery program and operational plan for 2022, which included a renewed focus on housing options.

Mr Cusack commended council on resolving to undertake investigation into residential housing supply and demand, planning the release of 110 lots in two releases from Keswick Estate before February 2023 and proposing in the 2022 delivery program and operational plan the rezoning of some land in Keswick to medium density zoning to provide an increase in density required to meet the undersupply of rental housing in the community.

While the REINSW group supports the housing plan, the message to council was loud and clear; this isn't enough.

"You will have to go further to ensure that Dubbo has the type of residential accommodation to provide for the existing and emerging workforce requirements in the region," Mr Cusack said.

"There has been a serious market failure since the LEP in rezoning in 1998 to provide basic flat and unit accommodation of one and two bedrooms to accommodate the large and increasing demographic not either requiring or able to afford a fully detached dwelling."

Mr Cusack suggested council add boarding houses and mobile homes as additional types of accommodation for the undersupply the region is experiencing.

"In September 2020 we alerted a councillor and passed on information to take to council relating to the sharply declining rate of residential vacancies in regional NSW, revealed in the REINSW, July vacancy rate survey survey, this was one of the first results of COVID-19 impacting the residential rental market around regional NSW," Mr Cusack said.

After the Council of Shields/McMahon released only 59 lots of Keswick land in the term to mid-2021, the REINSW members acknowledged the current council's work.

"Our members acknowledge your council has had a steep curve to come to terms with the residential demand and to then devise policy to create sufficient supply," he said.

"You've recognised the need for short term and emergency accommodation, and you've appointed Delos Delta to assist council in assessing the current state of short term worker accommodation in our region and our division has accepted the invitation of the council to participate in this investigation."

Mr Cusack said Dubbo Regional Council was ideally placed with its own land bank to be a facilitator to increase the supply of housing in the region.

"Providing the Commonwealth and state governments assist with a funding mechanism," he said.

Dubbo mayor Mathew Dickerson said he understood there were a number of issues surrounding housing in the area.

AirBnB was one of the many reasons Cr Dickerson mentioned that was having an impact on the housing availability in Dubbo.

Currently on the AirBnB website, there are over 115 available short term accommodation options for Dubbo, taking away from potential rentals.

Another issue was the fact fewer people lived in one house compared to 1911, Cr Dickerson pointed out.

"If you go back there were approximately 4.7 people living per household, now there's approximately 2.6 people per household," he said.

"Even if our population doesn't grow, it still doubles the housing requirements, so that creates stress."

A bit of blame was laid at the feet of the previous council, with Cr Dickerson saying they didn't have a lot of "strategic planning" in relation to solving the housing issues.

"We've been left to try and and quickly fix some of those issues up...unfortunately the last council dropped the ball somewhat in strategic planning so we have to resolve that but there's only so quickly you can move," he said.

Cr Dickerson said when speaking with land developers they say there is at least a 10-month wait on concrete pipes that go in the ground when they are doing a development.

"That's just land development and getting that completed is a tough ask...and once you've got the land to build on you've still got to find builders to go and do the building work so there's a few impediments there," he said.

The mayor wasn't too pessimistic about the situation, saying it was great they had a community people wanted to live in.

"There are people wanting to move to Dubbo, so it just adds additional pressures and making changes with housing is difficult," he said.

Cr Dickerson said they were all "good" problems to have.

"It would be much worse if you took the opposite case and said 'we have so much housing because people are leaving in droves', that would be a terrible issue to have," he said.

"We have to make sure we can address these housing issues and needs as quickly as we can."