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Legislative Council - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-09-09 Daily Xml
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Affordable Housing

The Hon. N.J. CENTOFANTI (15:01): My question is to the Minister for Human Services regarding housing stimulus. Can the minister please update the council about the progress of the Marshall Liberal government's stimulus measures to support the South Australian economy through building affordable housing?

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (Minister for Human Services) (15:01): I am delighted to thank the honourable member for her very important question and to provide her with a response—

The Hon. R.P. Wortley interjecting:

The PRESIDENT: The Hon. Mr Wortley is out of order.

The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: —on the great work that is taking place in South Australia, which has the twin aims of assisting people into affordable home ownership and also assisting the local economy in terms of stimulus funding to assist our building and construction industry.

Affordable housing, as I have mentioned before, is an area that I think has been neglected in a policy sense for some time in South Australia, with the assumption that because we have a relatively more affordable housing market we do not have people who are struggling to either get into affordable rental or purchase their own home. What we have found through AHURI research, which is in the public domain, is that there is a large number of South Australian households that are paying up to 50 per cent of their household income just to sustain either their rental property or in terms of their mortgages.

Affordable housing is something that this government has been very keen on. In the 2019-20 budget, we provided $21.4 million to assist with stimulus and also to kick off some building programs. I am very pleased that we have been able to release some of those to the market on the Affordable Homes website.

The aim with those hundred homes that are being built through this program is that they are located at close distance to the CBD, where a lot of people work. The properties that have been released at Findon are on sale between $345,000 and $400,000. Because they are new builds, they are also eligible for the First Home Owner Grant of $15,000 and the HomeBuilder Grant of $25,000.

In addition, my colleague the Treasurer has just released the expansion of the Starter Loan, which is available through HomeStart. There are some people who note that these prices can be quite high. If shared equity is part of the equation, which again is a product that is available through HomeStart, a property, for instance, of the value of $355,000 may mean that someone only needs to provide $206,500 to be able to get into the property and clearly they can get that through a loan. So the purchasing power of people who are on lower and more modest incomes, particularly at the moment with interest rates being so low, is quite in reach.

Given that the Reserve Bank is predicting that interest rates will be low for some time, it is a fairly good time for people to buy, because they can have the certainty that interest rates are not going to be increasing for some time. So there is a lot of opportunities, particularly with these new homes through the HomeBuilder program. We have also released some through the 1,000 homes that we have started building, which went on to the market at Broadview in a very good location, which should appeal to a large number of people who may wish to purchase them.

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