A research project investigating opposition to affordable housing in Australia found that prejudice towards people living in subsidised housing was the main reason for resistance to planned projects.

Project leader Gethin Davison, from the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW, said people generally found other legitimate planning concerns to mask their prejudiced opposition.

“People are smart and they know that just complaining about living near poor people isn’t going to get them results so they do something which is more likely to get results, which is to actually raise planning issues,” Dr Davison said.

“You can’t just go to the planning authority and say I don’t want to live next to poor people so please don’t allow this development to happen.”

He said the legitimate planning issues included concerns about parking, overdevelopment, the built form, privacy, shadowing and the management of the property.

Dr Davison said while the research work had concentrated on Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane the findings were so widespread that it would be certainly be applicable to the territory.

He said the research team had analysed more than 700 submissions lodged for affordable housing projects in the three cities and parking had been raised as a concern in 84 per cent of them.

“People care a lot about parking it seems or else they just know it’s a reason they can use to object to a development,” Dr Davison said.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report, which was published late last year, found that developers and governments could better explain to the public what affordable housing was and allay community fears through education and clear and fair planning processes.

Dr Davison said getting rid of the prejudice was a challenge but governments could establish collaborative planning processes where residents could have greater involvement in legitimate planning issues like design and parking.

“We felt that sometimes there wasn’t enough engagement with the local community and part of the reason they objected so fiercely was that they hadn’t been involved enough,” he said.

ACT Shelter is hosting a forum on Monday on the opposition to affordable housing in light of the ACT government’s proposed major redevelopment of public housing properties along Northbourne Avenue, including the ABC flats. Dr Davison will present his research findings at the forum which will be held at the ACT Legislative Assembly at midday.

ACT Shelter executive officer Leigh Watson said the forum was being held to shed some light over the issue of opposition to development and how consultation could be improved to get better community outcomes.

She said consultation should not just be a “tick off box” as it usually was but a real means of establishing what type of housing could work in an area.

Ms Watson said the redevelopment of the public housing along Northbourne Avenue was a great opportunity to include community and affordable housing in addition to private and public. She said it was not about seeing how much public housing “we can bear or we can get away with”.

“It’s about how can we make this a diverse community that caters for housing for people at a range of different levels, including as much housing that’s affordable for people on low income as possible,” Ms Watson said.

The ACT government has committed to relocating all public housing tenants in the Northbourne precinct to other properties within 800 metres of the corridor or in the inner-north.

Housing Minister Shane Rattenbury announced last month that it would begin working on a strategy for community housing in the territory, following the delivery of an ACT Shelter report into the issue.