2024-05-09
The Victorian Greens have said the state’s public and community housing waitlist will continue to balloon while the State Labor Government demolishes thousands and drags its feet on building public and genuinely affordable homes.
According to the State Budget which was handed down earlier this week, Labor is currently demolishing and selling public homes at a rate not far behind the pace that they are being built.
In fact, only 1,554 additional homes were added to the social housing stock in the past year because 1,296 were either demolished or sold.
If that rate persists, with a waitlist currently totaling more than 120,000 people, it will take 31 years to clear the waitlist – assuming no-one else is ever added to the list.
Victorian Greens housing spokesperson, Samantha Ratnam, said in the midst of a housing crisis governments had a responsibility to build the homes people desperately needed.
Instead, Labor was planning to demolish 44 public housing towers and privatise most of the land.
And as the Budget has made clear, nowhere near enough homes are being built to outpace the ones being demolished in a way that will even make a dent in the public and community housing waitlist.
Quotes attributable to Victorian Greens housing spokesperson, Samantha Ratnam MLC:
“There are over 120,000 people in Victoria in need of a public home right now and many of them will have to wait up to 30 years for a home under Labor’s privatisation plans.
“Even those most in need on the priority waitlist fleeing family violence are waiting almost two years before being placed in a home.
“Labor promised Victorians a ‘big build’ of ‘social housing’ but the reality is that instead of building the homes we need, they seem hell bent on knocking them down and handing the majority of our public housing land to private developers to make huge profits.
“We’re in a housing crisis that is only getting worse under Labor’s watch.
“If they’re serious about fixing it, they need to build 100,000 public homes and make big property developers build their fair share of genuinely affordable homes."