Page 543 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 17 February 2016
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(f) as at 1 February 2016 there were 2106 applications on the ACT public housing waiting list and 799 applications on the ACT public housing transfer list;
(g) Phase III of the ACT Government’s Affordable Housing Action Plan was released in June 2012 and outlines actions to make housing more affordable in the ACT;
(h) it is reported that the ACT is experiencing a housing affordability crisis; and
(i) a lack of affordable housing is said to be both a cause of homelessness and a reason for people being unable to exit homelessness; and
(2) calls on the ACT Government to:
(a) develop and implement a realistic framework by June 2016 to address Canberra’s long public housing waiting list and transfer list;
(b) develop and implement a realistic framework by June 2016 to address Canberra’s affordable housing crisis and to increase the supply of affordable housing in the ACT;
(c) provide detailed information, by the last sitting day in March, of what action it is taking in relation to:
(i) addressing Canberra’s long public housing waiting list and transfer list;
(ii) providing exits from ACT homelessness services; and
(iii) providing housing for refugees moving to Canberra; and
(d) report back to the Assembly in March 2016 on progress.
I have spoken in this Assembly on numerous occasions before about the ACT’s long public housing waiting list and long public housing waiting times and about the lack of affordable housing in our territory. Unfortunately, the waiting lists and waiting times are still very long. My motion today highlights some of those salient points about the waiting lists, and I hope the government will step up and take some much-needed action.
The national partnership agreement on asset recycling between the commonwealth and the ACT states that the ACT must ensure that the total stock of public housing in the ACT does not fall below the level at 30 June 2014 of 10,848 dwellings. But the 2016 report on government services housing chapter shows that the number of public housing dwellings in the ACT has, indeed, dipped below that level. It was 11,063 in 2011; it was 10,833 at 30 June 2015, which is lower than the 10,848 dwellings stipulated in the national partnership agreement on asset recycling.
The impact that this has on vulnerable Canberrans who are waiting for public housing, who are on the waiting list or the transfer list, is that it is harder and harder for them to
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