Page 1570 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 27 September 1989
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There has been comment that there is no rationale for this expansion. I can assure the Assembly that there is. This year we will see a 2.6 per cent increase in the stock of Housing Trust dwellings. This is about equal to the estimated household formation rate. Our objective is to maintain the waiting time for a house at about the current level, and this can only be achieved in a socially just manner if the size of the program is related to the growth rate of the new households.
While these long-term plans will be assisted by the Commonwealth under the new housing agreement, I must express concern about the Commonwealth's decision to sell Gowrie Hostel. The ACT Government will make its views very clear on this issue. We also promised in our election campaign to improve housing so that the most needy benefit from the expenditure of limited resources.
One of the early measures considered by the Government as part of the ACT housing policy review was the rent setting strategy of the Housing Trust. I announced the policy on 9 July 1989. It will mean that higher income tenants will have up to a 20 per cent increase in rent this year as we remove subsidies from those no longer in need. Rents for higher income tenants will move towards the market levels while rents for those on lower incomes will remain affordable through the rental rebate system.
This policy will see a number of public housing tenants in receipt of a rental rebate increase of 73 per cent in 1989-90. But the review of housing policy must be an ongoing process. We will review the rent and the rent rebate policy again this year to see whether our existing practices take account of issues such as family size and work force incentives, particularly for women. Prior to the ACT election, we said that we would review the current system of maintaining the public housing stock to reduce hardship to tenants and to reduce turnover times.
We have already made the most important decision in this area. On 25 July 1989 the Government announced its decision to replace Melba Flats at a cost of over $35m over the next four years. The Melba Flats decision is without doubt one of the most significant decisions made by any Government. We have also decided in this year's budget to increase the number of older houses to be upgraded and to increase the money for repairs and maintenance. We will be examining ways of reducing the vacancy time while houses are being repaired.
I would like to turn now to the problem of homelessness. My colleague the Minister for Community Services and Health announced a short time ago that the ACT has signed a new agreement with the Commonwealth to cover the operation of the supported accommodation assistance program from 1 July 1989 to 30 June 1994. This program aims to ensure that homeless people in crisis have access to adequate and
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