A statewide hunt for housing-ready land has turned up nearly a dozen extra sites but tenants are likely to face a lengthy wait before they can move in.
Nine vacant or disused state-owned sites in Sydney and one in Newcastle will be used to build up to 1130 homes after years of inactivity.
They vary in size from a small patch of grass next to Arncliffe's fire station to the former Stockton Centre for people with disabilities in Newcastle, which is likely to be turned into 500 homes.
About 50 permanent social homes would be developed on an asphalted site left dirty and unused since the Eastern Distributor was built through Sydney's inner city in the 1990s.
"What an incredible missed opportunity this has been to deliver housing that we desperately need in Sydney," Housing Minister Rose Jackson said from the site in Woolloomooloo on Tuesday.
But the speed of the audit, announced with fanfare in early 2023 but so far only publicly identifying 14 sites, has faced criticism.
Labor hopes to begin construction on the Woolloomooloo site by April 2026, in its fourth year in government.
The opposition said the statewide audit had even held up the delivery of new homes, pointing to Labor tearing up a tender to construct 600 build-to-rent units in an old Sydney clothing store.
"We still don’t have a date on when the first home will be delivered or the details around what the developments will contain," housing spokesman Scott Farlow said.
But Premier Chris Minns defended the government's pace as it rolled out a host of measures to resolve the housing crisis, including rental reforms and mass zoning changes.
"It takes time," he said of the audit.
"We're going from absolute inactivity - the government doing absolutely nothing on these government sites for literally decades - to marshalling many agencies to deliver sites ... for housing."
More tranches of land will be released in coming months, he said.
Three sites unveiled in Woolloomooloo, Sydney Olympic Park and Hurstville will be transferred to Homes NSW and accommodate nearly 600 homes. More than half are likely to be social housing.
About 64 homes will be sprinkled on small patches of surplus land identified at Arncliffe in Sydney's south, Minto in the southwest, Seaforth on the northern beaches and Marsfield in the northwest.
Those sites will be developed by state housing developer Landcom or in partnership with the private sector.
The government said it had identified dozens of sites for potential development in July but did not reveal all of them at once.
Ms Jackson said that decision was to avoid distorting the market.
While initially expected to take mere months, the land audit now has no definitive deadline.
