IN the midst of a housing crisis gripping the Mid North Coast, the Greens have called for the old Macksville Hospital site to be repurposed to provide affordable housing.

The old Macksville Hospital and land was sold to private property group Romanous Developments for $1.65 million on June 7 2021.

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The land that the old hospital was built on was bequeathed by Macksville resident Harry Wall, who passed away in 1925.

Mr Wall bequeathed both money and land for the purposes of building a hospital at Macksville, which has a total land size of 29, 395m2.

Greens candidate for Oxley Dominic King, the former Mayor of Bellingen Shire, would like to see the hospital building modified and turned into low-cost apartments.

“It is beyond time that we started thinking with more imagination about how we might re-use public buildings, such as the old Macksville Hospital, rather than selling it to property developers,” Mr King said.

“The community needs to benefit, not large privately owned companies.”

Greens Upper House candidate and regional GP Dr Amanda Cohn accompanied Mr King to the old hospital site this week.

“NSW has a critical shortage of social and affordable homes, leaving too many people, particularly in rural and regional areas without a safe place to call home,” Dr Cohn said.

In July 2021, Danny Ramanous, Project Manager at Romanous Developments, said the site would most likely become home to a new medical operator, a bulky goods operator or an up-market hotel, indicating that residential development was not the company’s “core business”.