Ms Berry said the first group to be moved would be the residents of the 48 Owen Flats in the first half of next year, with the rest to follow over the coming four years.

The three-storey Owen Flats on Northbourne Avenue in Lyneham are now subject to heritage protection, a stumbling block that has upset Chief Minister Andrew Barr, who described the protection order last week as "absurd".

Last week, the Government announced plans to sell public housing across the city as part of the sale of $400 million of assets to raise money for the tram. For sale are the Red Hill flats, Strathgordon Court in Woden, the Stuart Flats, the Northbourne housing precinct and the Allawah, Bega and Currong apartments in the city. In all, there are 1216 units. The Currong block has already been vacated, as have the 21 Dickson Towers bedsits on Northbourne Avenue.

Ms Berry, who was concerned as a backbencher last year about Northbourne being turned into a zone of "posh" apartments for the rich, is now housing minister, and said she was determined tenants will be given a real say, "not just polite consultation".

"Nobody will be evicted as a result of this process. Nobody will be forced into homelessness as a result of this process," she said. "That's the assurance that I'm giving that we're going to speak to all of them and make sure that their individual circumstances are taken into account."

If possible, tenants would be housed where they wanted to live. Many had opted for Gungahlin, but some would want to stay in the city and "as far as possible" that would be accommodated, she said.

The Government has set up a "Linking into New Communities Taskforce" to talk to tenants.

The experience of moving the 21 residents of the Dickson Towers bedsits last year was that some people "just want to be able to take their washing machine" whereas others might need to be close to their family or a health centre or need disabled housing.

Asked how the Government would be able to build sufficient flats for the 1356 tenants in just four years, Ms Berry said new homes were already being built. Gone were the days of hundreds of tenants in one block, with the Common Ground project in Gungahlin, containing 40 units (20 public housing and 20 community housing), representing the limit.

"For some people this will be an easy move and a move that they will be happy with but for others it will be quite a difficult change in their life so I want to make sure that they get all the support that they need," she said.

A spokesman for Mr Barr said the government was confident it could build 1200 new units in the four-year timeframe, with sufficient sites either in government hands or owned by private developers already. But it would be more complicated than simply shifting tenants in the blocks slated for demolition to new homes, with the option of moving also open to tenants in other public houses.

The Heritage Council's decision to register 65 of the 169-strong Northbourne Housing Precinct flats has stirred controversy, with Mr Barr saying it was unacceptable and vowing to push ahead with demolition plans.

But council chairman Duncan Marshall said the heritage order did not mean the units were immune from redevelopment.

"We are not seeking to turn this complex into a museum and we are not seeking to turn this complex into an abandoned ruin," he said. "These buildings need to be used. They need to have a life, they need to be maintained. We think adaptive reuse is one very good possibility and we are keen to talk about how that might be achieved."

The Heritage Council did not want to stop all development but to ensure sympathetic development, he said, and quite apart from heritage issues, maximising development on all sites was "not necessarily a good outcome".

Asked about Mr Barr's threat to push ahead with demolition, Mr Marshall said it was the government's right to make "the big hard decisions", so long as it had a very clear understanding of the heritage values at stake. He pointed to the heritage-protected Fluffy homes facing demolition as an example of where public health overrode heritage.