The woman tasked by the NSW Government to lead the response to the state's housing crisis told a conference of town planners in Wollongong "we are undisputedly 100,000 homes short in supply" and the Illawarra has a role to play in addressing the problem.

Kiersten Fishburn, the NSW Government's Planning Secretary, said there was no doubt the state government's biggest immediate challenge was "housing, housing, housing" and she said Wollongong and the Illawarra will need to step up to help increase supply.

Ms Fishburn said we'd never encountered a time when everyone across government and industry agreed there was such a serious housing crisis "and I've never seen an environment right across NSW where there's such a singular focus to find solutions".

She said her department had released five-year housing targets in 43 council areas, including the Illawarra and Shoalhaven. The ambitious goal is to deliver 377,000 new homes across the state by 2029.

"That is an enormous number and more supply than has ever happened in NSW's history," Ms Fishburn said. "What's most positive is that all levels of government have signed on and we're not starting from a zero base."

Each local government area will receive a five-year target and housing snapshot that explains how many homes are in the pipeline already and how many more are expected to be delivered. The targets prioritise more diverse and well-located homes in areas with existing infrastructure capacity, such as near railway stations.

"There are already DAs and construction in the system but there is still a gap and it's a little bit of an everything, everywhere and all at once strategy."

Ms Fishburn said there were three 'macro conditions' that were the biggest challenges to meeting the bold housing targets "which are largely out of our control." These included the cost of construction materials, which were up 30 per cent; the shortage of labour "because people don't want to go into construction"; and continuing high interest rates.

She told last month's NSW Planning Institute conference the state government had responded to the crisis by rezoning to help create 15-20 years' new supply. "We need to do everything in a planning sense to respond to changing market conditions," she said.

"We also want to have diversity. There is less housing diversity now than there was 100 years ago. We simply don't have the diversity to suit different lifestyles."

Ms Fishburn said a lot of the strategic planning work being done emphasises the importance of regions. After all, she said "my minister is the Member for Wollongong [Paul Scully]".

"We may often seem like we're focused on metro but we also need to put energy and commitment working on regional housing strategies."

She said these strategies would see the "transformation of regional centres" like Wollongong. "It's a city that embraces innovation, technology and change" and "a beautiful place to live."

Ms Fishburn said she'd noticed a big shift in community attitudes as the housing crisis deepened.

"People are now responding to change differently and hundreds are writing to us saying, 'you should have gone denser'."

Despite the big challenges ahead, Ms Fishburn said it was "an incredibly exciting time" for town planners. "NSW is having a whole new future and a denser one."

And in her message to people in the planning profession who have such an influence over how our city's will look in future decades, the state planning boss said "you are in one of the few areas of government that doesn't focus on the electoral cycle."

"You have great responsibility as the custodians of decisions which will have hundreds of years of consequences, and that's a very exciting and privileged thing to be involved in every day.

"Planners have to hold themselves to that. We need to get houses out but at the same time we must leave a positive legacy."