Page 2880 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 24 June 2009
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Affordable housing is one of the key planks of communities and families and growing communities and growing families. Adequate and secure housing is a basic need. It is one of the most important areas of concern to government: to provide the environment which enables people to meet their housing and accommodation needs. The extent to which a community seeks to meet the basic needs of its members is a key indicator of the kind of society we live in.
This government cares about making sure that this basic community need is met to the greatest extent possible. This is why the government has developed its affordable housing action plan, released in April 2007. The action plan outlined 62 initiatives designed to assist the ACT community to meet its housing needs.
While there has been some discussion here today on land rent, I would like to draw your attention to some of the other initiatives that this government is successfully putting into place. The OwnPlace initiative has seen a significant number of house and land packages costing under $300,000 released into the housing market. These are not “bare-bones” packages, as some have tried to imply. People, often with young families, who are already stretching to be able to afford to purchase a house usually do not have the additional resources needed to fit out new houses with carpets, light fittings, curtains, heating, landscaping and other essential items. Most of these OwnPlace home and land packages include a comprehensive list of extras designed to make the new home liveable, not just a place to live.
An initiative developed to support the OwnPlace scheme is the affordable housing design competition, funded by the ACT government through the Housing Industry Association and the Australian Institute of Architects. The ACT also funded the Master Builders Association special affordable housing award and the HIA affordable housing award. Innovations in the design and construction of affordable housing will be showcased in demonstration villages in Franklin and Dunlop.
The entry cost to get people into their first home can be significant, and the government has addressed this through its stamp duty concession scheme initiative for eligible first-homebuyers, increasing the stamp duty threshold to $120,000 and allowing the deferral of stamp duty payment for up to five years.
Many people still remain, however, in the rental market, some by choice but many by force of circumstance. The government is addressing the issue of rental affordability through initiatives in this area as well. These initiatives are designed to support the effective operation of the private rental market and to ensure that the rental market can meet a range of incomes and individual needs.
Specific measures in this area include the private rental initiative, which will deliver between 200 and 400 new private rental dwellings in Canberra as part of a broader development initiative. The government has expanded the asset base of CHC Affordable Housing by transferring 130 houses to CHC and has entered into a $50 million agreement which will deliver 250 additional rental properties over the next five years and 500 properties over the next 10 years.
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