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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-11-13 Daily Xml
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Housing Affordability

The Hon. J.S. LEE (14:34): My question is for the Minister for Human Services regarding housing. Can the minister please provide an update to the council about how the Marshall government is supporting older people in social and affordable housing?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (14:34): I thank the honourable member for her question and for her interest in this area. We know particularly from the report that was commissioned by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), that in South Australia there is unmet demand in the affordable housing space. For this and a range of reasons the Marshall Liberal government has been very keen to ensure that that unmet demand for people who are experiencing housing stress is able to be met through a range of projects both within the government and the non-government sector. The AHURI report has outlined that the number of older people who are paying off mortgages has doubled in a decade. They certainly don't have the—well, a range of people, younger people as well, don't have the positive housing outcomes of previous generations.

At the same time, we also have the matter of older women becoming nationally the fastest growing cohort of people experiencing homelessness. So for this reason, in the public housing space, I was very pleased to open a new building yesterday at Prospect, which is a 20-apartment building for people entering the public housing system, which has Disability Discrimination Act compliant bathrooms, communal areas, a place for charging and storing mobility scooters, lifts, and a whole range of other features that make it much more friendly.

We also have the Assist program which is targeted specifically at women over the age of 50 to assist them through the HomeStart program to enable them to purchase homes. Older women can often experience relationship breakdowns. They may have provided funding to their children and they find themselves caught without the assets that they might have had, as well as compounding with that the matter of not having had the unbroken work history that a lot of men have. We have released for interest, and now to market to assist people who are eligible—so that is a single person household earning less than $85,000—to purchase properties which are located at Findon, Kidman Park and Woodville West. Construction for those is going to begin in February 2020.

In relation to our own housing stock, we have an enhanced maintenance program and we also have a housing construction stimulus program from the budget that is continuing to develop affordable homes across the Adelaide metropolitan area, north, south, east and west, to assist people on low and moderate incomes who meet the eligibility criteria. There are a range of things where the government, within our own Housing SA funding envelope, is progressing with those. We also have in the non-government sector a range of tier 1 providers who are looking at providing particularly affordable rental, and potentially with shared equity products to assist people into home ownership.

There are a range of programs taking place and work is continuing. We also look forward to releasing later this year our housing and homelessness strategy which had a lot of input from a whole range of people across the sector, whether it is the private sector, the non-government sector, people with lived experience and, of course, our own public sector to develop that which will guide us over the next 10 years.

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