Office for Regional Housing will fast-track homes for essential workers
The state government has a housing plan for country South Australia.
A new Office for Regional Housing will aim to fast-track housing projects for workers in country South Australia, the state government has announced.
Premier Peter Malinauskas said the office, part of Renewal SA, would work with councils, builders and investors to get homes built where they lined up with strategic and economic objectives.
Under a pilot program – the Regional Key Worker Housing Scheme – the government would also build 30 homes for police officers, teachers and health care workers across country SA.
The homes would be sold on to private investors under a long-term lease arrangement.
“We have a housing crisis in Adelaide, but in many parts of regional South Australia, rental vacancy rates are even tighter,” Mr Malinauskas said.
“That makes it even tougher for those communities to get the people and the skills they need to thrive.”
- More information: renewalsa.sa.gov.au/office-for-regional-housing.
Government will build more public housing, ban rent bidding
Thursday’s was the latest in a serious of housing-related policy announcements from the state government.
On Wednesday it declared it would ban “rent bidding”: the practice where prospective tenants promise to pay a rental rate higher than the one at which a property was advertised.
Two days earlier, it committed an extra $55.2 million to new public housing over the next four years.
It also pledged to cancel plans to sell 580 Housing SA properties across the state.
Human Services Minister Nat Cook told Murray Bridge News the government had not yet determined how many extra houses would be built, and how many fewer would be sold, in Murray Bridge.
“Additional locations for the final $177.5 million Public Housing Improvement Program homes (are) being currently being considered,” she said.
“These will include future opportunities to deliver new public housing and redevelop existing homes in Murray Bridge.”
The government has also been looking at options including modular housing as a stop-gap measure amid the current shortage of rental properties in regional SA.
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