Page 3190 - Week 09 - Tuesday, 20 August 2019
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
Perhaps coincidentally, six days after asking a question on notice about the release date of the cohort study report on homelessness that the government received some months ago, it was released.
I would now like to turn my attention to two areas that I feel have not been given the attention they deserve in the budget. These are community housing and homelessness. Looking at community housing, there is nothing in the budget that supports a serious ramp-up of the community housing sector. Community housing providers can and do deliver housing for people across a wide range of need: those at risk of homelessness, traditional social housing for people on low or very low incomes, and so-called affordable housing, where rent is set as a percentage of market rent, and usually targeted at people who are in housing need but who would not be eligible for social housing.
Community housing providers are uniquely placed to access cheaper and longer term finance than is available from commercial lenders via the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation. In addition their tenants can access commonwealth rent assistance, and this can be factored in to the rents that they are charged. The upshot is more rental income for community housing providers, at no extra cost to tenants.
Beyond measures that we know the government does not support, such as transferring management of public housing stock to community housing providers, there are several other ways of expanding the sector. One is to make better use of our land release program. The number of dwelling sites for community housing providers could be dramatically scaled up. With such scale, the government could include particular outcome requirements, such as housing for people with disability or housing for people on very low incomes.
Scale and certainty for the sector would encourage providers from interstate to set up operations in the ACT. Sadly, that scale is not being encouraged. In the past two years the ACT’s indicative land release program has identified 20 and 34 dwelling sites respectively for community housing. Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, these sites have yet to be made available to community housing providers.
Responses to questions taken on notice from both Mr Coe and me indicate that dwelling sites identified for sale to community housing providers will be sold at market value. We have learned at estimates that there will be no requirements on community housing providers regarding energy efficiency, accessibility, the types of tenants who should be housed in the dwellings built on the land or the rent-setting structures that should apply to these tenancies.
This is entirely at odds with the approach being taken by other jurisdictions, and all the more galling considering that the budget papers show that the net profit of the Suburban Land Agency in 2018-19 was estimated to be 33.5 per cent, which works out at a return for government of $390 million. A possibility could be that the government could trade off a reduced profit to the Suburban Land Agency and enable them to sell blocks at a discount to community housing providers, provided there was a clear and enforceable directive regarding the sorts of social and housing outcomes it wanted to achieve. Another response to a QoN that I submitted states:
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video