Some of the last remaining former Mr Fluffy blocks have been purchased by Housing ACT to be used for public housing.
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The ACT's Community Services Directorate has confirmed that Housing ACT is in the process of purchasing 31 remediated blocks from the government's Asbestos Response Taskforce.
The sites will form part of the government's "growing and renewing" public housing program. It came after the government announced it would allocate a further $32 million of land towards public housing in August.
Sixty new public housing properties were promised as part of that announcement. This was added to a previous announcement for 200 dwellings.
At the time, the government did not specify that it would be purchasing the remediated Mr Fluffy blocks. Housing Minister Yvette Berry was asked where the blocks would be and she responded by saying they would be built across Canberra.
Housing ACT have aimed to finalise the purchase of the 31 remediated blocks by the end of the year and construction will start on some blocks this year.
"The purchase and construction of public housing on these sites will provide sustained economic recovery to the territory," a community services directorate spokesperson said.
"Where block size and site constraints permit Housing ACT will build homes that support tenants living with a disability, tenants with larger families and tenants choosing to age in place."
Despite being asked, the Community Services Directorate did not identify the suburbs where blocks had been purchased, the spokesperson only said: "these blocks are in suburbs all over Canberra to ensure that public housing is available in as many suburbs as possible".
But real estate listings website Allhomes shows that 23 Mr Fluffy blocks have sold in the past month and all are located in the Woden Valley region.
It is not clear whether all were sold to Housing ACT but most of the blocks were sold en masse on September 28 and October 1.
It's been more than five years since more than 1000 Mr Fluffy homes were identified across Canberra.
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Of those 974 properties were surrendered and included in the ACT's government's buyback and demolition program.
The latest report from the Asbestos Response Taskforce showed sales contracts had been exchanged on 898 blocks before June 30 2020.
Of those, 846 sold via a public sale, 47 were sold back to the owners via a first right of refusal and five were sold to another government agency.
As of June 30, 881 blocks had been put up for public sale and 32 were on the market.
According to the report, the Asbestos Response Taskforce said it was working towards an auction event in the "latter half of 2020".
The Community Services Directorate spokesperson did not specify how much the was paid for the Mr Fluffy blocks only that the package announced by the government included $32 million for land.
Most of the blocks that were listed on Allhomes were more than 700 square metres, which means two dwellings can be built on the sites after a territory plan variation was put forward to allow this on Mr Fluffy blocks.