Challenge to public housing scheme fails

The four women claimed they were victims of a ''discriminatory'' public housing policy pursued in 1980s and 1990s that concentrated single mothers in government-provided flats, units and townhouses.

But the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal has dismissed the tenants' claims, finding no evidence that such a practice existed and that Housing ACT was reasonable in applying its policy of not selling individual flats, units or townhouses.

The decision is the latest setback for the Narrabundah women, aged between 57 and 68, whose complaint to the territory's Human Rights Commission was found in 2011 to ''lack substance''.

The tribunal decision comes in the wake of revelations that some middle-class tenants facing eviction under an ACT government crackdown were simply buying their houses from the housing department rather than moving out.

The four women all live in Throsby Court, a complex of two- and three-bedroom townhouses in the leafy part of Narrabundah and were single mothers when allocated their homes between 1982 and 1991.

In their application to the tribunal, they asserted that they were originally located in Throsby Court because they were single mothers.

They argued that if they had not been single mothers, they would have been allocated a stand-alone house in the suburbs and would now be eligible to participate in one of the ACT government's public housing sell-off schemes.

Housing ACT has been running programs since the '90s aimed at promoting home ownership among public tenants; the Public Housing Sale to Tenant Policy and the Shared Equity Scheme for tenants.

But tenants in flats, units or townhouses are not eligible for the schemes because they do not have separate titles from their neighbouring properties.

Housing ACT told the tribunal that even if it could divide the titles of Throsby Court's 23 dwellings, it has no intention of selling because the complex's upmarket location gives it prime redevelopment potential.

The four tenants went to the Human Rights Commission and eventually to the tribunal, alleging a breach of the Discrimination Act, after many years of refusal from the department to requests to sell them their townhouses.

But the department produced figures that showed 81 per cent of public tenants who are single mothers live in stand-alone houses and 42 per cent of single women in the system were in stand-alone houses.

Tribunal member Allan Anforth found that Housing ACT had acted reasonably and within the law in not subdividing its property to allow the tenants to buy their homes.

''There is nothing directly or indirectly discriminatory in the text of either scheme,'' he wrote.

''The refusal of the respondent [Housing ACT] to subdivide Throsby Court for the benefit of the applicants is entirely reasonable in the circumstances,'' Mr Anforth wrote.