Southern Metropolitan Region
Katherine COPSEY (Southern Metropolitan) (12:56): (472) My question is to the Minister for Housing. Compared to social or community housing, public housing offers the greatest accountability to tenants. This is because when the government manages their homes, tenants generally know who is solely responsible for maintenance and complaints handling: the government. However, I have heard from community housing tenants in my constituency whose maintenance requests seem to either have been forgotten or ignored or take months and sometimes years to action, and often this happens with zero communication. Tenants appear confused as to who to turn to for support or what a third-party housing organisation’s obligations are to them. Given these existing problems in community housing and your government’s apparent decision to withdraw from providing any public housing by transitioning more people into community housing, how will you guarantee that my constituents will have greater accountability and clarity over maintenance, repairs and dispute resolution regarding their homes?