Page 2800 - Week 09 - Thursday, 27 September 2007
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To further ease the burden of upfront payments for first home buyers, we announced that the eligibility of the home buyer concession scheme would be increased from the 40th percentile house price to the median house price. As the Assembly is aware, the home buyer concession scheme was amended to increase property value criteria to include median priced properties, and the arrangements commenced on 1 July.
The government has also introduced the Revenue Legislation (Housing Affordability Initiative) Amendment Bill to allow conveyance duty deferral for first home buyers for up to five years. The bill, which was debated and passed on Tuesday, will also enable people to defer payment of land for affordable house and land packages until the certificate of occupancy is issued. This will reduce the upfront cost for first home buyers and will also prevent the need to pay rent while attempting to repay a mortgage.
A small but increasingly important player in the ACT’s housing market is community housing. The action plan involves a multimillion dollar investment in the not-for-profit community housing sector by enhancing its capacity to deliver innovative affordable housing solutions. We will help Canberra’s main provider of community housing, Community Housing Canberra, undergo a major expansion, delivering an additional 500 affordable dwellings over five years and more than 1,100 over the next decade. Community Housing Canberra will keep around 250 of these extra properties for rent over five years, increasing to 470 over the decade.
The government has begun to deliver on this expansion of the community housing sector. It has agreed to the direct grant of three properties to Community Housing Canberra, being in Holt, Gungahlin and Gungaderra, and to the development of a rolling program of land sales in conjunction with the CHC. Members will be aware that the Revenue Legislation (Housing Affordability Initiative) Bill that was passed on Tuesday also introduces new provisions in the Duties Act, the Rates Act and the Land Tax Act that provides for organisations such as Community Housing Canberra to be exempt from the payment of duty and land tax.
The community housing initiatives also include a $40 million injection of equity through title transfers to Community Housing Canberra, a revolving $50 million loan facility and a $3.2 million capital subsidy over three years. The Department of Disability, Housing and Community Services transferred 132 properties to CHC by 30 June 2007 and this major investment recognises the important role that community housing plays in meeting the housing needs of our community.
Public housing also continues to play a vital role in providing affordable housing for Canberrans. With a stock portfolio of over 11,500 properties, it is estimated that Housing ACT directly houses some 30,000 people. The public housing stock represents approximately nine per cent of all properties in the ACT, almost double the national average. The ACT is the only jurisdiction to increase public housing property numbers both in real terms and as a percentage of total properties under the current commonwealth-state housing agreement.
The government has invested an additional $30 million over three years for public housing stock from 2006-07. In the first year of this program, 25 additional properties
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