Roger Jaensch,Minister for Housing
The Hodgman Liberal Government set ambitious housing targets that, despite challenges in the market, have been met or exceeded.
Our first Affordable Housing Action Plan, which sits under our comprehensive 10-year Affordable Housing Strategy, set four-year targets to assist an additional 1600 households with their housing needs, including supply of 941 affordable land lots and homes, 372 of which were to be new social housing dwellings.
With these targets having been met or exceeded, we have assisted a total of 1605 additional households into safe, secure accommodation that meets their needs, delivered a total of 984 affordable lots and homes, and significantly boosted our supply of social housing, with 453 new dwellings delivered.
Importantly, the 984 figure also includes 174 new homes built under our HomeShare mortgage equity scheme. A further 177 homes were purchased by Housing Tasmania tenants with help from the Tasmanian Government. Together, this means a total of 351 low income households were assisted into home ownership for the first time under our Plan.
This is great news for Tasmanians in need and we will continue to do what we can to boost the supply of affordable homes.
We know there is still a lot more to do, and we have a significant number of homes already under construction as part of a pipeline of work that will continue as we move into our second Affordable Housing Action Plan. Bringing forward funding in this year’s Budget means we can continue the momentum and deliver more homes and other housing initiatives sooner.
We have also recently announced an extra $5 million in funding for immediate actions to address homelessness, which includes expanding the capacity of existing crisis shelters using pre-fabricated dwellings and more funding to secure cabins, hotel and motel rooms for emergency accommodation.
The Hodgman Liberal Government will continue to focus on the supply of more social housing, releasing more affordable land close to services and employment and providing more supported accommodation for targeted groups. It brings our total investment to a record of almost $200 million over eight years – the largest State investment into affordable housing in Tasmania’s history.
The report can be found here: https://www.communities.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/45383/Quarterly-Housing-Report-June-2019.pdf
