The ACT government has outlined its plans for moving about 1500 public housing tenants, as it tries to spread public housing much more evenly around the city, breaking up the concentrations in the inner north and inner south.
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Public Housing Renewal Taskforce head David Collett released a broad timetable on Wednesday, including plans for 352 replacement units in Moncrieff, Amaroo and Nicholls in Gungahlin, Coombs in the Molonglo Valley, and Monash and Chisholm in Tuggeranong in the first tranche. The plan is for blocks of about 25 to 30 units in each new development.
Mr Collett and housing director David Matthews released a map showing the biggest concentrations of public housing are in Braddon, Reid and Oaks Estate.
The government plans to move the 1500 tenants from ageing buildings over four years, including from along Northbourne Avenue and the Allawah and Bega Court flats.
The first 21, from the rundown Dickson bedsitter flats, have gone. Tenants in the 48 Owen Flats, also part of the Northbourne precinct, are to be moved in the coming 12 months. Next come the 46 Kuruah garden flats in Dickson, the 144 Red Hill flats, the 114 Allawah Court flats in the city, and 107 of the Northbourne Flats on the Braddon side of the street. Each of those moves is scheduled for 2016-17.
The government has embarked on replacing its big blocks of ageing public housing, with about 1500 tenants to be moved from 1288 units in Northbourne Avenue, the Allawah, Bega and Currong flats, the Red Hill flats, Stuart Flats in Griffith, Gowrie Court in Narrabundah and part of Strathgordon Court in Woden.
The government aims to accommodate tenants who want to stay in their local areas, and is developing new housing in the 800 metre corridor either side of Northbourne Avenue. Mr Matthews said about a quarter of the 21 tenants in the Dickson bedsits had wanted to stay in the area and his gut feeling from early work with the Owen Flats tenants was about half would want to stay.
Plans have been drawn up for major new private developments replacing public housing at Red Hill, the Stuart Flats and Gowrie Court. Each will go from about 150 units to 500, including apartments and townhouses, but Mr Matthews said the government was yet to make decisions on whether any of it would be set aside for public housing. The taskforce was not relying on those developments to make up its 1288 new units, he said.
Mr Collett said while Canberra had more than twice as much public and community housing by population as any other jurisdiction (at 30 dwellings for every 1000 people, with a national average of 17), it also had the oldest average stock in the country, with the multi-unit housing in particular reaching the end of its life. He released photos of outdated kitchens and bathrooms in some of the units. Mr Matthews said properties were expensive to maintain, costing $40 million year in maintenance, and expensive to live in, with limited insulation, falling short of community norms.
The new housing had "designed out" maintenance in new designs.
Mr Matthews said while 97 per cent of housing allocations went to people most in need – couples on a total income of $48,000 or less and with other issues – they should not be stigmatised. They were people with whom the wider community shared jobs and classrooms, and who just wanted to get on with their lives, he said.
"When we talk about people having high needs ... it doesn't mean that they are a problem for other people," he said.
The government has also put out a call to property investors, developers and builders with land packages or multi-unit properties in development or ready for market, offering to buy properties for public housing. Tenders are invited till July 20. Mr Collett said he was encouraged by the response this week.
