The Hodgman Liberal Government is committed to providing more affordable housing for Tasmanians in need.

Our Affordable Housing Action Plan will deliver 900 new homes and housing for an additional 1600 vulnerable Tasmanians over the next four years.

Today, I am pleased to announce that we are calling for Expressions of Interest under the Community Housing Stock Leverage Program – an important initiative of our Action Plan.

This program provides for the transfer of the title of up to 500 public housing properties to community housing providers who will then leverage their value to build up to another additional 150 homes.

We are supporting this program with an investment of $2 million over four years, which will deliver new homes for vulnerable Tasmanian households.

Community housing providers are not-for-profit organisations that share our commitment to providing homes for those in need.

The previous Labor-Green government transferred the management and, therefore, the value of much of our public housing stock to community housing providers, and our leverage program will formalise this approach.

While Labor and the Greens would now seek to deny Tasmanians in need a roof over their heads, we are making strong progress in delivering more housing.

In addition to this program, we have also already put out to tender our $5 million Private Developer Social Housing Grant initiative, which closed yesterday.

This tender sought units in small complexes of up to five units per project to be constructed and retained as social housing to house low income, vulnerable Tasmanians who are Priority Housing Applicants on the housing waitlist.

Homes will be built in areas of high demand, especially areas where less than 20 per cent of total housing in the community is social housing.

While the program is being conducted Statewide, it aims to primarily target areas of high need in the North and North-West.

This is a great opportunity for small to medium builders and developers and is based on approaches used successfully by Housing Tasmania in the past.

The Liberal Government is getting on with the job delivering more housing for Tasmanians in need.
Jacquie Petrusma, Minister for Human Services