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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2025-06-26 Daily Xml
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Housing Trust Site Security

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (14:33): My question is to the minister for Housing. What does the minister say to Daniel, a Housing Trust tenant in Novar Gardens, whose property caught alight? With your leave, sir, and that of the house, I will explain.

Leave granted.

Mr PATTERSON: The Housing Trust property where Daniel lives in Novar Gardens was the target of an arson attack last week. Daniel lives with a disability that means he is unable to move from his house of over 20 years, despite living in fear for his life from the increasing violence happening right next door.

The Hon. N.D. CHAMPION (Taylor—Minister for Housing and Urban Development, Minister for Housing Infrastructure, Minister for Planning) (14:33): Of course, any Housing Trust tenant—and there are many who are victims of antisocial behaviour, crime or fire, whether it be accidental or deliberate—we have the utmost care and concern for which is why the trust reached out to the individual concerned to offer him temporary accommodation and to check in to see if the property was not fire damaged and the like. There have been some maintenance issues which came out of those interactions.

Of course, we want to see a safe and secure public housing offering, not just for public housing tenants but for their neighbours. We have to remember that the vast majority of the over 33,000 properties we have and the vast majority of the tenants we have are very good tenants and very good citizens, and we have a small range of issues around antisocial behaviour, criminality and the like.

In this case, it was not caused by trust tenants but rather by illegal activity in an unoccupied trust home. Of course we care about the trust tenants, and there has been more than one fire in and around Novar Gardens, so we are concerned about that. We have had our contractors properly board up vacant homes in the area with steel boards to discourage squatters, and we are working with South Australia Police and the Metropolitan Fire Service, obviously, to do all we can to discourage this behaviour.

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