Australian Property News

Housing affordability schemes scaled back to rebuild flood-affected communities

Posted on Friday, January 28 2011 at 6:15 PM

The Federal Government's approach to rebuilding flood-affected communities puts other housing programs on the chopping block, according to the Urban Taskforce chief executive Aaron Gadiel.

Gadiel said the Federal Government's scale-back announcement of its National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) from a forecasted 100,000 new homes to just 35,000, and the halving of the Building Better Regional Cities Program leaves a major void on affordable housing.

"These two programs were originally announced to demonstrate the Commonwealth's commitment to addressing the housing supply shortfall," said Gadiel.

While they lacked sufficient funding, they could have been gradually expanded as part of a broader federal solution to affordable housing problems, he said.

"Instead the government has elected to cut back funding to comparatively paltry levels."

"Now the scheme will deliver just 35,000 homes and the priority for the remaining 13,000 homes built will be for disaster relief, rather than improving the housing supply," said Gadiel.

The Building Better Regional Cities Program was supposed to see up to 15,000 more affordable homes in regional cities over three years, as promised in the 2010 Federal Election. "But we can expect that this number will now be halved."

Gadiel said the $200 million scheme was supposed to give participating councils new funding to invest in local infrastructure projects that support new housing developments, such as connecting roads, extensions to drains and sewerage pipes, and community infrastructure such as parks and community centres.