Housing and New Suburbs Minister Yvette Berry and Planning Minister Chris Steel walk the former Minimbah Court public housing site in Yarralumla. Photo: Ian Bushnell.
Canberrans have been urged to be more accepting of public housing projects, particularly in the inner south and north.
Housing and New Suburbs Minister Yvette Berry made the appeal on the site of the former Minimbah Court public housing complex in Yarralumla, which is about to be torn down and replaced with 30 new dwellings, up from the original 12.
The $19.33 million project in Schlich Street was delayed for almost two years due to the approval being challenged in the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal, contributing to the ACT Government’s decision to, in effect, ban third-party appeals for public and social housing projects.
Two residents, Les Landau and John Hutchison, had sought a review of the August 2024 approval of the project, in a bid to reduce the number of units and include a basement car park to preserve more green space. But ACAT upheld the approval in April last year.
In nearby Curtin, a five-storey, 58-unit social housing project has been proposed near Holy Trinity Catholic School but has attracted a petition from some residents complaining about its size and potential overshadowing of the school.
Ms Berry was asked what her message would be to those opposing the project.
She said the housing crisis was not going to go away and was likely to get worse.
“We’re asking Canberrans to share some of their space for people who are particularly vulnerable and don’t have the same kinds of choices as the rest of us,” she said.
“We simply need to build more homes and we need to build more public housing and community housing and we need to build it as quickly as we can.”
Ms Berry said there was an unfair perception around public housing and the people who lived in it, and she urged people to be open-minded.
“We’ve seen suburbs and all parts of Canberra who live very harmoniously together and people don’t even know whether they’re private or public dwellings, so I think it’s just a perception that people have and they need to give it a chance and meet their neighbors, welcome them into their community.”
Planning Minister Chris Steel said 95 per cent of the appeals against public housing projects to ACCAT were occurring in the inner south and inner north and the government didn’t accept the proposition that there shouldn’t be new public housing built there.
“It’s really important that we make sure that we are building new housing and renewing public housing and community housing in those really well-located areas and not selling off all of the sites to then build new housing on the fringes of our city, where people aren’t necessarily as close to services or the communities that they have connections to,” he said.
But the Curtin DA was submitted before legislation passed preventing appeals to ACAT and could still end up there if it is approved.
Mr Steel could no longer step in because the legislation also took away the Minister’s call-in powers, which are now in the hands of the Chief Planner.
An artist’s impression of the Minimbah Court public housing project, which will deliver 30 modern homes. Image: Collins Pennington.
He said the time taken to get the Yarralumla project under way had been far too long and had left many vulnerable families on the public housing waiting list without shelter.
“That is unacceptable and the government has now clearly legislated to make sure that that doesn’t happen again for future projects and we’ve been clear with the community about our expectations,” Mr Steel said.
The Yarralumla project will deliver a mix of 18 one, 10 two and two three-bedroom homes across three two-storey buildings and was expected to be ready for people to move in by the end of next year.
The verge trees and many of the mature trees on the site will be retained and a further 150 planted.
Mr Steel said the buildings would fit in well with the suburb and the canopy cover on site would be greater than before.
The project is part of 85 homes the government is delivering with support from Housing Australia’s Future Fund Facility Round 2.
It is also part of the ACT Government’s commitment to enable 30,000 more homes, including delivering 5000 additional public, community and affordable rental dwellings, in Canberra by the end of 2030.
Master Builders ACT has questioned whether the government would be able to meet these targets given the international situation, but Ms Berry said the government was doing everything that it could.
“Housing ACT worked very closely with our building partners during the previous conflicts when there were shortages in supplies and builders used a range of different innovative methods when they were building homes so that we could get them almost finished,” she said.
“If there is a long tail to the conflict [which] means that there will be delays in supplies, I’m confident that the building sector will be able to work through a range of different ways to get these buildings constructed.”
Monarch Building Solutions has been awarded the demolition and construction contract.
