The ACT government has told a group of Oaks Estate residents they will need to pay more than $17,000 yearly to lease a hall that previous tenants paid only five cents a year to use.
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Despite charging a peppercorn rent to Southside Community Services, which held a five-year lease for the suburb's community hall, the government sent the Oaks Estate Progress Association a letter outlining charges that would reach at least $85,000 across the life of the licence.
OEPA spokesman Hugh Griffin said the charge - which would grow by 3 per cent in following years - would come despite the government receiving the hall as a gift in the 1950s on the condition it was kept in community use.
"Now the OEPA is ready to resume the traditional management of its asset and the government has now decided they're going to punch us in the gut for $17,000 a year to use land that was ours and a building that was ours," Mr Griffin said.
"Charging us a cent for our own building is a breach of that caveat," he said, referring to the conditions under which the government received the property.
"Trying to charge us $17,000 is beyond a joke, beyond a disgrace.
"It shows what this government truly thinks of 'community' and it yet again, for the thousandth time, shows what this government thinks of Oaks Estate – the poorest and most disadvantaged community in the ACT."
Mr Griffin said he had been speaking with the government about the proposed changes since November.
An ACT government spokesman said the annual lease fee for the Oaks Estate Community Hall covered utility expenses including water usage, building maintenance, fire protection and monitoring, management and insurance.
However the government would review the impact of the fees in consultation with small community group users, and its agency ACT Property Group did not make any profit from leasing out community facilities, he said.
Mr Griffin said OEPA had held the hall for free and managed the property for decades until not-for-profit, non-government organisation Southside Community Services - now known as Community Services #1 - leased it in 2013 for five cents a year.
