2025 saw Tasmania’s public housing waitlist consistently trend upwards, with no months of retraction and an end to the year with more than 5,400 applicants.
Can the government detail to the Council how many social housing homes and how many affordable homes, Homes Tasmania has been primarily responsible for delivering since it came...
New figures from Homes Tasmania show that the social housing waitlist is continuing to grow.
The Greens welcome the release of disability housing indicators by TasCOSS and Disability Voices Tasmania.
Homes Tasmania information in an RTI generated by the ABC has exposed the deceptiveness of your government's claims to build 10,000 new dwellings by 2032.
Minister, you're very good at articulating the fact that we're a third of the way through our time period to 2032 and we're a third of the way to meeting our 10,000 home target. But when it comes to social housing, the most recent dashboard shows that 370 new social homes have been built so far. That's 19 per cent of the 2000 social homes target, which is to be reached by mid-2027.
I want to talk about specialist disability accommodation. In Tasmania we have a high proportion of people living with a disability: 26.8 versus 17 per cent elsewhere. There's significant demand, and I note that your dashboard says that 2735 Homes Tasmania tenants are living with a disability. The Housing Strategy Action Plan reports that as of April last year, 38 per cent of all applications on the housing register involve a person living with a disability, so we acknowledge that there's a significant need.
I have some questions about Aboriginal housing, particularly on Cape Barren. The Budget holds a one-off payment to help the Cape Barren Island community plan the design, delivery and ongoing maintenance of municipal and essential services and housing. This is welcome and acknowledged, but there's nothing in the forward Estimates to actually deliver on what is planned, noting that housing is a significant constraint on Cape Barren Island in terms of Aboriginal people returning there to work or people wanting to return there with their families.
I want to go back to debt. Last year's annual report showed that there was borrowings with TASCORP of a bit over $60 million. The budget papers have got it rising to $230 million and in just a few years it's going to be a pretty staggering $720 million. That will cost Homes Tas $40 million just to service interest payments when we go out there. You mentioned earlier the Homes Tas borrowing limit of $266 million. Has that been raised?
Minister, the MacPoint precinct plan has a residential development zone, as we all know, at Regatta Point and the development and the $240 million from the federal government that's not GST exempt is actually conditional on building affordable homes on the site. The precinct plan is clear on the fact that the housing there would be a mixture of Homes Tasmania and Health department affordable housing for health workers and apartments for release on the market. Can you confirm if any of the $240 million from the federal money has been set aside to invest in this residential development?