Page 2519 - Week 08 - Thursday, 30 August 2007
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change to eligibility criteria for Housing ACT has ruled out a large number of Canberra people from the hope of access to public housing. They are trapped in the nether world of increasingly unaffordable private rental accommodation, which in effect means no housing.
I find it amazing that the ACT government, with its Live in Canberra campaign and its desire to increase our population, does not think that the kinds of people who cannot afford to live here might not in fact brighten Canberra’s economic future. You do not have to be wealthy or of middle to high income—as one does now to purchase or rent a house in Canberra privately—to contribute to our society and to our economy. I see the loss of these people. We are losing many good people. The less than market rent approach to affordable housing being pursued by Community Housing Canberra might help some of them, but it will not help too many.
Over time, the change to the security of tenure arrangements will push out a few—a very few—of the market rent paying tenants. New tenants already are overwhelmingly those with the highest level of need. I do not just mean financial need; I mean need in terms of being people with a mental illness, people with some kind of disablity or people with a drug issue that makes it impossible for them to work and earn a high income.
That means that public housing is becoming welfare housing. There are people who think that is appropriate. It would be all right for them to think it is appropriate if they were not the same people who then complain about the kind of tenants we have in public housing. We will see increasingly stigmatised housing with a shrinking capacity for community building and development and an increasing cost per tenancy, which someone will have to pay—some government somewhere—undermining our broad social commitment to ensure that a home is available for all. Public houses will increasingly hold the kind of people that most people do not want to live next door to. At the moment we have a mix in public housing which acts as a buffer. If you could see the people—
Mr Hargreaves: I wish she knew what she was talking about. She doesn’t know.
DR FOSKEY: If you could see the mix of people who live in the Bega and Allawah flats and so on, you would understand—
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.
DR FOSKEY: I would like some more time, thank you.
Mr Hargreaves: Give her another 10 minutes. I can’t wait for this. I am being thoroughly entertained by this, Mr Deputy Speaker.
DR FOSKEY: Sometimes you do not know whose side you are on, Mr Hargreaves.
Mr Hargreaves: Yes, I do. You don’t know what you are talking about.
MR DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Dr Foskey, you have the floor.
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