Affordable Housing

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:42): My question is to the—

Members interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: Order! Conversations between the leader and the Hon. Mr Ridgway are out of order, in fact between any member. The Hon. Ms Lee has the call.

The Hon. J.S. LEE: My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding affordable housing. Can the minister please provide an update to the council on how the Marshall Liberal government is improving access to affordable housing in South Australia?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:42): I thank the honourable member for her question and for her interest in this area. As part of our Strategic Plan for South Australia, we have made commitments to promote and increase the supply of affordable housing solutions for South Australians—an area that has almost been forgotten in the market for people who are on low to moderate incomes—to enable them to have the same aspirations as everybody else in terms of owning a property or accessing affordable housing through the community housing sector.

There are two areas where we have had some new initiatives. Quite recently, I had the pleasure, with Housing Choices Limited, to launch the site of their new affordable property at Bowden which is going to provide a range of one and two-bedroom homes right by the railway line. It will be a Nightingale project. Nightingale is well known in Melbourne as a very environmentally friendly developer, which is particularly attractive to younger people because of the environmental benefits and the key worker opportunities for people to reside there. Indeed, they have a balloting process and it is usually highly oversubscribed. We are very pleased that the new Nightingale project at Bowden will be part of our Affordable Homes project strategy in South Australia.

We have also just recently launched HomeSeeker SA, a revamp of the Affordable Homes Program, which provides a great deal of information for home seekers to be able to access information and resources about home ownership, as well as view the properties that are available through the formerly known Affordable Homes project.

We know that prospective buyers face four major barriers to home ownership, which include not having enough money to save for a deposit, not being able to find a home in a suitable location at a price point that they can afford, not knowing where to start researching the housing market, and a lack of easy to understand and independent information about the many steps involved in home purchase.

HomeSeeker has been designed to assist people to overcome these barriers and to take the scariness out of purchasing your first home. HomeSeeker will provide an improved service that includes the standard listing that has existed previously of 90 days for eligible buyers, a highly functional new website that is very easy to navigate and an interactive built-in tool on the website's home page to efficiently guide users to relevant content, depending on their age, income, housing status and other attributes.

What we are also seeking to do through HomeSeeker SA is to build information that we can provide to the development sector so that they understand that this is a really important segment in the South Australian market and provide continuing opportunities for people in those low to medium incomes going forward.