Housing All Australians chair Jo Farrell, Jonny Warren Properties director Jonny Warren, ACT Shelter CEO Corinne Dobson and ACT MLA Thomas Emerson started their campaign in early August. Photo: Jarryd Rowley.
A community push to renovate 20 vacant public housing properties by Christmas has won the backing of the ACT Legislative Assembly, after members agreed to government safeguards but rejected an attempt to water down broader targets for getting empty homes back into use.
Independent MLA Thomas Emerson’s motion passed as amended, putting Assembly support behind the 20 Homes by Christmas campaign and retaining calls for tighter targets around public housing vacancies.
The campaign, led by Jonny Warren, has brought together tradespeople, businesses and volunteers offering their labour, materials and expertise to renovate 20 vacant public housing properties at no cost, aiming to get individuals or families into them by Christmas.
Mr Emerson brought the issue to the Assembly amid concern about the ACT’s 588 vacant public housing properties and a waiting list of 3652 approved applicants.
Of the vacant homes, 285 were undergoing maintenance or upgrades as of 30 June. Mr Emerson said the number of vacant properties had increased by more than 50 in the first half of this year, while the waiting list had grown by more than 150.
His motion called on the government to work with Mr Warren’s team to identify 20 suitable properties for the project.
But it also went beyond the Christmas campaign, seeking to reduce the average vacancy time for public housing properties needing maintenance or upgrades to no more than 90 days and lift Housing ACT’s occupancy target from 96 to at least 98 per cent.
Mr Emerson said public housing properties awaiting maintenance or upgrades had recorded an average vacancy time of 284 days as of June.
“While it won’t solve the housing crisis, it offers the opportunity to change the lives of 20 households,” he said of the Christmas campaign.
Housing and Homelessness Minister Suzanne Orr supported the proposal but successfully amended it to spell out how the project would need to work with the government’s existing public housing arrangements.
Under her amendment, the 20 Homes project can proceed only if it meets relevant legal requirements, including tenant privacy and government probity rules, and Mr Warren’s team enters into appropriate arrangements with Programmed Facilities Management, the company contracted to manage ACT public housing facilities.
Thomas Emerson: “While it won’t solve the housing crisis, it offers the opportunity to change the lives of 20 households.” Photo: Michelle Kroll.
In effect, the government accepted the community offer but made its support conditional on the volunteers working within the existing system rather than independently of it.
Ms Orr argued those requirements were not simply government red tape.
“These are not barriers to community involvement; they’re important safeguards that must be maintained to protect volunteers, protect tenants, and protect the public interest,” she said.
Her amendments also added more detail about the 285 vacant properties undergoing maintenance or upgrades.
As of 30 June, 79 required routine maintenance, 80 needed a single upgrade, 69 required multiple upgrades and 57 needed major works or insurance repairs.
Ms Orr challenged the suggestion that the reported 284-day average vacancy period meant properties were routinely spending that long being repaired.
She said the figure measured the entire period without an active tenancy and was pushed higher by properties requiring extensive work or going through insurance processes.
The government’s figures showed that in the final quarter of 2025-26, properties were being returned by Programmed to Housing ACT after an average of 8 days for routine works, 25 days for single upgrades and 36 days for multiple upgrades.
Once repairs were completed, Housing ACT still had to find an appropriate tenant, considering factors such as household size, accessibility, safety, support needs and connections to services before allocating a property.
Ms Orr also stressed that although the volunteers were offering their labour and materials for free, government still had responsibilities around safety, risk, quality, procurement and oversight.
She said there would also be a cost to government in coordinating and supporting the project.
Mr Emerson accepted Ms Orr’s amendments, allowing those safeguards to become part of the final motion.
However, the Assembly rejected a second set of government amendments that would have weakened the broader vacancy targets. Labor had sought to exclude homes requiring extensive repairs, insurance work or considered “hard to let” from the proposed 90-day average, and to only consider lifting Housing ACT’s occupancy target from 96 to 98 per cent.
Mr Emerson opposed the changes, arguing the 90-day target was already an average and difficult-to-let properties should remain part of the measure.
Independent MLA Fionne Carrick then successfully strengthened the motion by requiring a formal accountability indicator measuring whether properties needing maintenance or upgrades are returned to use within an average of 90 days.
“What gets measured gets managed,” Ms Carrick said.
The Greens and Canberra Liberals also backed the initiative, while Ms Orr cautioned that legal and contractual issues around the volunteer project still needed to be resolved.
The 20 Homes by Christmas motion ultimately passed as amended.
