New figures provided by the Victorian Labor Government have revealed their plan to demolish 44 public housing towers will see an increase of just 15 new social homes built each year across these estates over the next three decades.
During Question Time yesterday, in response to questioning by the Greens, Labor’s Housing Minister Harriet Shing said the project would see the current 6,660 public housing units replaced with just 7,100 social homes over 28 years.
Given the project is slated to be undertaken between now and 2051, this means an increase of just 440 new social homes built over the next three decades, or approximately 15 each year on average.
Leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam, said Labor was using the demolition of the public housing towers as a smokescreen to conceal their actual agenda: to sell-off the public land to private developers.
She said the Housing Minister’s figures made clear that Labor only plans to marginally increase the number of social homes across the estates, and instead release the majority of the land to private developers.
In the middle of a housing crisis, with 125,000 people on Victoria’s public housing wait list, the Greens say Labor should be building more public housing to drive down the wait list, not privatising and selling off the few remaining state assets suitable for public housing.
As stated by Leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam MLC:
“We need public housing, not privatisation.
“Labor has revealed that their plans for the wholesale destruction of public housing in Victoria is being driven by an agenda to sell-off the majority of these public sites to developers rather than meaningfully increase the number of social homes.
“Labor is yet to commit to building any public housing at any of these sites, and this could mean the end of public housing in Victoria.
“Right now there are 125,000 Victorians in desperate need of genuinely affordable housing. Demolishing these towers only to replace them with mostly expensive private homes and a miniscule number of social homes means thousands of Victorians will continue to struggle to keep a safe and secure roof over their heads for decades to come.”
