The Hodgman Liberal Government is committed to providing more affordable housing for Tasmanians in need.
A key initiative of our Affordable Housing Strategy is the reprofiling of public housing stock to ensure that housing matches the needs of tenants.
Since coming to government we have adopted a strategic approach to managing public housing, with older houses being sold to re-invest in building more modern, energy-efficient homes.
Public housing in areas of low demand may also be sold to reinvest in areas with higher demand. As well, with proportionally more singles who are elderly, people with disability and youth on the waiting list, as opposed to large families, we have less need for larger homes and more need for smaller, more accessible homes.
Today, the Department has responded to a Right to Information (RTI) request on public housing properties sold in the past financial year throughout Tasmania.
The RTI shows that the number of sales has been largely in line with those under the previous Labor and Labor-Green governments, but much more strategic and less ad-hoc.
Importantly, almost a third of those properties sold in 2014-15, or 47, were purchased as first homes by Tasmanian households on low incomes through either the HomeShare or Streets Ahead programs.
Further, several properties were vacant, some due to fires, and were sold to Better Housing Futures providers to allow the building of more social housing.
In the brief period that Labor’s Rebecca White was the Minister responsible for public housing she sold off 20 public housing properties.
While expected, it would be the height of hypocrisy, therefore, for Labor to criticise the Government’s responsible reprofiling of Tasmania’s public housing stock.