Victorian social housing groups are angry at the state government’s decision to rent out housing compulsorily acquired to make way for the East West Link road project, saying the dwellings should go to the most needy.
After scrapping the former government’s major road project in December, the premier, Daniel Andrews, said once people forced out of their homes had been offered the chance to move back in, he would consider handing the rest over to social housing.
“There are many, many people who need a roof over their head and if we can use these houses to provide support and assistance to some of the most vulnerable in our community then that would be a very good outcome,” he said at the time.
But dwellings acquired from the Evo apartment complex in Parkville were available for rent, the office of housing minister Martin Foley confirmed on Friday, though he did not how many of the 175 were available.
And of 10 further properties purchased early on hardship grounds and made vacant, seven have subsequently been tenanted.
One Collingwood property, owned by the office of housing before being compulsorily acquired for the project, has been returned to that office.
In a statement, Foley said: “Our first priority is to ensure that those residents who had their homes taken from them by the former Liberal government are given the opportunity to return if they so choose.”
Once that roll-back program for original owners was complete, it would be easier to identify which properties could be available for future public housing and other opportunities, his office told Guardian Australia, adding that Liberal governments had cut Victoria’s social housing budget.
According to figures published last week in the Productivity Commission’s report on government services 2015, in 2010-11 Victoria spent $903m on social housing. By 2013-14, that figure was $431.4m.
The chief executive of the Council to Homeless Persons, Sarah Toohey, said since the government had acknowledged there was a dire need for social housing they should commit to donating the East West Link properties to the vulnerable.
“It would be a quick and easy way for the government to boost social housing in the state, because with 34,000 on the waitlist, there is clearly a desperate need,” she said.
“The government has prided itself on being really transparent about the East West Link project since scrapping it, and it would be good if they could be transparent about their plans for these houses as well and commit to a social housing plan.”
The situation is further complicated because many of those who had their properties compulsorily acquired were still living in those dwellings, having been given a deadline of September to move out. This could make identifying the potential social housing options problematic.
