By ERWIN CHLANDA
The NT Government, in power for two and a half years, is now “developing a housing strategy to align housing requirements with stock,” according to a spokeswoman for Housing Minister Bess Price.
The spokeswoman says: “As of January 31 the total number of public housing dwellings in Alice Springs was 858. 134 dwellings were unoccupied. 20 of these are now available for allocation and the Department of Housing is currently appointing tenants to those dwellings.
“This will reduce the overall number of unoccupied dwellings to 114. There are about 614 applicants on the Alice Springs wait list.”
The spokeswoman says the department “recognises the need to be innovative in its delivery.
“A mixed tenure model is used to deliver greater housing choices to Territorians including public housing, community housing, affordable rentals, affordable home ownership, and the sale of urban and remote public housing to existing tenants to facilitate home ownership and economic development.”
A Registrar for Community Housing has been appointed and will be in charge of the strategy.”Dwellings often require maintenance prior to reoccupation depending on the condition of the house when the last tenants leave,” says the spokeswoman.
“The remaining 114 unoccupied dwellings are undergoing major upgrades, refurbishment, maintenance or are being assessed for ongoing suitability.”
PHOTO: Vandalism of public housing is a continuing problem. This archival photo is from 2010.
Friday, December 20, 2024
The freedom of the press still furnishes that check upon government which no constitution has ever been able to provide – Chicago Tribune.
This not news. Five percent of houses are empty. One would have to ask why we are building more when the ones we have are not occupied. As for the Kilgariff subdivision, it is not for the average worker working for town council or the supermarkets, due to cost.
I assume all of you out there are aware of the real problem, as to why there is so much vacant public housing stock: the tenants.
I had this problem over my back fence for over four years, and yes, they were Indigenous.
The legal tenants were no problem, it was the unruly mobs who came in from bush in the weekends, drinking, fighting and wrecking doors, windows etc. with the Police called constantly to evict them.
After dozens of complaints, from all the neighbours, they were evicted and we were advised the house would be sold in a general auction along with a big number of other vacant properties.
If you haven’t been through this then you are lucky, because if the house was refurbished and another lot of like tenants were to move in, I think it would lead to warfare.
Solution: Build a common area of tenancy houses / units so they don’t intrude on the mortgage paying owner / occupier residences.
Davo is right to some extent but not all of the vacant houses had an indigenous problem.
My daughter had to vacate when her younger son turned 18.
She had the job of ensuring that the house was left to an acceptable standard, not easy when for years it was subject to numerous maintenance call-outs.
The house was left in an acceptable state and there it has sat for several years virtually abandoned.
The garden is over run (would have got a please explain if the tenant was still there), the air conditioner has been stripped and the place is now in a state of disrepair.
Why didn’t housing get new tenants or auction off the property? A pretty high degree of incompetence in my opinion.
Get something done Bess!
Put these houses onto the market (but not all at once).
Young working people need somewhere to live.
These dwellings could then be done up and sold as people move up the property ladder.
This is what I said to Julia Gillard back in 2011. The majority of the public housing has been sold off and the Australian government has done nothing Australia wide to rectify the housing situation.
To make matters worse the Centrelink payments are being changed to benefit only the working class and make the poor poorer. It wont be long and a single parent would not be able to keep a roof over her kids’ heads.
Rents are going up and the government pays us less.
No more government housing properties should be sold. That’s why nobody can be housed here because they have sold most of it.
The young fellas can stay in motels or caravan parks, buy a flat pack house from Bunnings and set it up at a mates’ mums and dads.
I’ve got news for Ms Nelson: I AM a bloody worker, and I do NOT want my taxes used to provide houses for people in the “don’t work, wont work” bracket.
Sell ALL the houses so they’ll be looked after by people who deserve them – us workers.
It is a known fact most tenants do not look after there homes. Yes, they live in them but they still do not care.
Why give people places to live without making them look after the place, not just repair the damage they inflict? That is not general maintenance.