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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-06-05 Daily Xml
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Housing Authority

The Hon. F. PANGALLO (15:18): Can the minister answer the question, though: how much is owed by Trust tenants in unpaid rent? What is the government doing to recover that unpaid rent? Has the government adopted a policy to write off most of all that debt? What's going to happen to the previous Labor government's program to build 1,000 new homes in 1,000 days? Is that going to be scrapped?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:18): My apologies to the honourable member. I could talk about this issue for a very long time and a range of issues, as you can tell.

If I can deal with the 1000 Homes in 1000 Days issue first. That was a program developed by the previous Labor government. I think it was entirely misleading in its title because it implied that there would be 1,000 additional homes in the system. It was actually 1,000 new homes. It is due for completion in September of this year. My understanding is that more than 1,000 homes were demolished in order to produce these 1,000 new homes, so for anybody who was assuming there was going to be additional stock through this process, they were sadly misled.

That program is due for completion in 2018. From some of the community forums that I attended, there were some pretty unhappy tenants who were moved out because the program was going to come hell or high water. Also, because it scaled up and scaled down very quickly it meant that the program had to be delivered at a much higher cost than it would otherwise be. Anyone who understands the housing sector, they like to have a pipeline of projects which enables them to keep costs down, whereas this was very much a policy by media release, and I don't think there are too many people who are particularly proud of it.

In relation to customer debt, my advice is that all customers are required to pay outstanding debt and arrangements are made when a customer is unable to pay their debt in one payment. Housing SA continually reviews debt and its origin and strives to improve processes and procedures. My advice is that those recovery processes have been improved in recent years and that is reporting updated better management of debt. Payment options include Australia Post direct payments, BPay or EzyPay, which directly deducts payments from people's Centrelink pension or allowance.

In relation to the total outstanding debts, I am advised that as at 30 April there was $19.84 million worth of outstanding debt; the number of tenants with a debt was 5,292, the number of non-tenants with a debt was 6,752, which makes a total of 12,044 customers and former customers. Some of those non-tenants would be people who may have a debt through the private rental affordability program. My understanding is that those processes have been improved and Housing SA continues to negotiate with customers in order to reduce those levels.

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