Housing
Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:20): (304) My question today is to the Minister for Housing, and it relates to the idea of additional public or social housing committed as part of the destruction or redevelopment or sell-off – call it whatever you want to call it – of the 44 public housing towers. In your answer to Dr Ratnam’s question last sitting week, you said that there would be an additional 440 social housing units built as part of this project, and I note no commitment toward any new public housing. The social housing waiting list stands at over 125,000 people. Behind this number are 125,000 individual people’s lives and stories. They are waiting for an affordable, safe and secure public home. I just cannot fathom a time when we will see the waitlist reduced to a manageable number, and on assessment the government’s current plan will see the waitlist grow. At what point will there be a reduction in the waitlist, and will it ever reach zero?
Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Housing, Minister for Water, Minister for Equality) (15:21): It is good to see your passion on these matters, Mr Puglielli. As you are aware, waiting times for social housing are dependent on the number and the types of properties that are available, and that also depends upon where it is that tenants or people wishing to enter into the social housing system want to go, as well as the needs of those tenants – for example, people who are moving away from situations of family violence or people who have specific needs around transition from homelessness into housing. That often requires quite a dedicated wraparound approach. We have, as you would also be aware, priority areas that can be identified by people who wish to enter into the system or to be relocated, and that also has a bearing on the way in which the houses are allocated to people, as well as people in the priority access, including response to emergencies, such as those in the recent floods.
One of the things that was interesting – and I will go back to what you referred to at the outset of your question in referring to my answer to Dr Ratnam last sitting week – in talking to people at the towers in Richmond was that there is a not insignificant vacancy rate there because of the fact that people do not necessarily wish to move into the towers. They want to live in other locations, and we therefore have a disproportionately higher rate –
Members interjecting.
Harriet SHING: Dr Ratnam, I can see you shaking your head. You might actually want to head down there and ask people yourself. But what we do know is that –
Nicholas McGowan: On a point of order, President, the minister is verballing the member. The least the member could do is name the member involved.
The PRESIDENT: I am not too sure what that point of order was. There is no point of order.
Harriet SHING: What we do know is that, in reducing the register and in bringing more homes online, there are a number of factors at play there. But what I can do is confirm that we have seen a change in the housing register whereby numbers are not only plateauing but starting to reduce. This is as a direct consequence of record investment and also of providing people with assistance to move through the housing continuum – that is, to move from homelessness through crisis accommodation, around to social and public housing and then into affordable housing and ideally home ownership. As those wraparound supports continue, we are providing people in a range of circumstances with access to housing that then enables them to become more independent in ways that work for them. In 2022–23 we had more than 7000 households move into social housing across the state. That is off the back of the waiting list. That 7000 number is an increase of 21 per cent on the previous year. The change in new additions to the housing register has dropped – (Time expired)
Aiv PUGLIELLI (North-Eastern Metropolitan) (15:25): It is a shame we ran out of time. I think we were going to get some more information there. I thank the minister for the response. However, I also note from engagement with residents from these towers that there are many at these towers that are slated for demolition, destruction, however you want to refer to it, that are saying they do not want to be removed from their home. It is where their community is. The disruption that is caused by this displacement is extremely significant. As referenced by my colleague Dr Ratnam, the feasibility of other options rather than the demolition of their homes would have been crucial here. We have heard a lot, frankly. We have heard about your plans as a government on housing: the big build that has delivered a net increase of, what is it, 74 homes? We have heard about your plans to knock down these public homes and rebuild them with a paltry additional 10 per cent, equating to 15 additional homes per year over the 44 tower sites. Will you ever be able to provide enough public homes for everyone who needs one in our state?
Harriet SHING (Eastern Victoria – Minister for Housing, Minister for Water, Minister for Equality) (15:26): Thank you very much, Mr Puglielli. I fully appreciate the fact that change is really, really hard for people who are moving their location and often the base that they have called home for decades. That is not in contention. What we do need to do, though, is make sure that the homes that we are providing to people across social housing are safe, are fit for purpose and provide people with access to adequate ventilation, adequate insulation, noise attenuation, proximity to amenities and indeed the sorts of things that actually comply with current design standards. Those towers, when they were constructed between the 1950s and the 1970s, used some, as I have said, pretty unique concrete construction. That makes them unviable from a cost perspective to retrofit. We have done a lot of improvement to make sure that those homes are as livable as possible, but when you are talking about concrete girders that go from the top of a building to the bottom, it is not viable.