The ACT Greens have called on their Labor colleagues to release the long-awaited housing strategy urgently, and detail how the government plans to provide more community housing in Canberra.
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Greens planning spokeswoman Caroline Le Couteur called on Housing Minister Yvette Berry to release the strategy, after an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare showed Canberra continues to have the second-lowest proportion of community housing in the country.
It also comes as the proportion of public housing in the ACT has also fallen from 12.4 per cent to 7.1 per cent over a couple of decades, a trend reflected around the nation as Commonwealth funding has fallen and state housing agencies have been left without significant new investment for more public housing.
The city's planning, development and housing sector has been waiting for the new strategy for several months, since stakeholders formally put forward their ideas in a summit late last year.
While the government pledged the new strategy during the 2016 election campaign, the strategy, if it is complete, has not been released.
Ms Le Couteur labelled the lack of affordable housing in Canberra a crisis, criticising the government's affordability targets as "grossly inadequate".
She said the Greens wanted more public and community housing, but until they got to actually see the strategy, it was unclear what the government actually intended to do about affordable housing.
Ms Le Couteur said the real story in the AIHW report was the fact the ACT had arguably the lowest proportion of community housing, at only 7.4 per cent of all social housing stock, compared to the national average of 19 per cent.
However, Ms Berry said her advocacy and record in supporting "a strong social housing and homelessness service sector is clear", and the growth in community housing in other jurisdictions was due to transfers of housing out of public hands.
She said other governments were outsourcing their responsibilities, and the ACT had not done that "because we believe in growing and renewing public housing and as a result we have more dwellings per person than any other Australian state or territory".
Ms Berry also said the 2018-19 community housing targets had been set "with reference to the current capability of the sector" and she hoped to grow them in future years with community housing providers.
"I am working with my ministerial colleagues and advisory group to finalise the strategy and intend to release it in the second half of this year as planned," she said.
All Labor MLAs voted against a motion Ms Le Couteur put to the Legislative Assembly earlier this year, urging government not to lower the affordable housing targets more, but it passed with the Opposition's support.
