Page 413 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 20 February 2018
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Some of the numbers are just embarrassing. Only one new public housing dwelling in all of Lawson? And 143 public housing dwellings go nowhere near maintaining the current proportion of social housing. I would be interested to know if the cost of these new dwellings is going to be financed at least in part through the sale of existing public housing assets.
Providing land for only 34 new community housing dwellings does not do enough to grow the supply of community housing, especially in the context of the national housing finance and investment corporation commencing operations in the next year. This entity will aggregate bond finance and distribute it to community housing providers, giving them access to long-term, low interest finance with construction and acquisition of new community housing dwellings. Land released to this sector should be massively ramped up so that community housing can take advantage of this funding. It would be helpful to know what process will be used to allocate land set aside for community housing—the small amount of it at this stage.
I am also curious to know why census data for the number of community housing dwellings has been used in table 2 of the notifiable instrument, which details the current proportion of social and affordable housing within each suburb where new land is being released. It shows, for example, that there are no community housing dwellings in Lawson. However, on 21 June 2016, two months before the census and immediately before the first tenants moved in, Minister Gentleman launched nine townhouses in Lawson that are owned and managed by CHC Australia, which, as we all know, is a Canberra-based community housing provider. These townhouses have been rented to low and moderate income households at a 25 per cent discount to market. Perhaps using data provided to the register of community housing providers which includes information about the number of dwellings and their location could be more helpful than census data.
These figures are a win for transparency, but they appear to be a step backwards for affordable housing supply in the territory. In the light of recent data in the report on government services which shows that Canberra has the dubious distinction of having the highest proportion of people in private market rental stress, they are disappointing. I call upon the government to put more focus on the delivery of additional affordable public and community housing stock.
Papers
Mr Gentleman presented the following papers:
Subordinate legislation (including explanatory statements unless otherwise stated)
Legislation Act, pursuant to section 64—
Public Place Names Act—Public Place Names (Gungahlin District) Determination 2018—Disallowable Instrument DI2018-8 (LR, 8 February 2018).
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