Question Time: Social Housing
Ms BURNET question to MINISTER FOR HOUSING, Mr VINCENT
[10.19 a.m.]
Thank you, Speaker. In 2018, your government introduced the housing land supply bill, claiming it would help increase the supply of land for affordable and social housing at a critical time. By 2024, despite being amended twice, it has delivered just six social houses on rezoned government land. Minister, how many social houses have been constructed in the last two years as a consequence of land rezoned under a housing land supply order, and what is your timeline for legislating the transition of Homes Tasmania's functions back into a government department?
ANSWER
I thank the member for the question. This is something that we deal with every day at the moment. The transition back into government, we're working through some of the complications of the legislation and with the workforce and how that will fit. We were hoping for late this year, but to be realistic, we think that it will be far better off to aim for the end of the financial year of 2027 to do it properly. That does not mean that every single day we're not working to transition to more homes for everybody who needs them, regardless of whether it's crisis care or normal housing for social and affordable.
At the moment, I think we're up to - and I haven't checked in the last couple of weeks, but it's around 10 to a dozen that are now being started on Huntingfield Estate, with that increasing with the next parcel of land coming on shortly. There is also work to be done on realigning some of the titles, because if you remember, it's been quite a few years, as I'm reminded all the time, since Huntingfield started, and with the changes to the layout of the subdivision, the easiest way was to do an amendment to the housing order there to tidy up those titles there. We're going through that process at the moment, but it is accelerating.
We have 17 housing supply orders through. We have one at Warrane that's under planning at the moment. We have another one at Kings Meadows that's before the council there; Howrah; the one at Romaine is being worked through at the moment with two there, and another 13 to go on it. There is also Cambridge Road that is subject to a development approval. Although we acknowledge that we started from a slow base, Homes Tasmania as it is presently sitting, has had a large amount of acceleration, the way to say it, over the next 12 months to two years in getting a lot more places started. I acknowledge that more could have been done earlier, but hence the issues that were there and what we've done to fix some of those issues. It is accelerating quite rapidly. Thank you.
Supplementary question
Ms BURNET - My question was about how many houses have been delivered in the past two years. It's not the number of supply orders; it's the number of houses, social housing, that have been delivered.
Mr VINCENT - Can I just clarify that you mean on housing land supply orders, not the normal side of it?
Ms BURNET - Yes.
Mr VINCENT - I don't have all the full details, but I'm happy to find out exactly what that is. To my limited knowledge on Huntingfield, it's at 10 to 12 at the moment, but I'm not sure if there are any on the other titles. I will come back to you on that.