SPCHG has made a submission to the current Parliamentary Inquiry into the Public Housing Towers Redevelopment program. The decision to demolish and rebuild all 44 public housing towers was announced in late 2024 as a centrepiece of the Victorian Government’s Housing Statement. The project has been described as the single biggest urban renewal project in the country’s history.
Here is a summary of our concerns.
- The current plan will increase the number of people living across the 44 sites from 10,000 to 30,000.
- The number of social housing renters (both public and community), however, will only increase from 10,000 to 11,000.
- The remaining 19,000 people will be living in “affordable” or “market” housing. These types of housing will not be affordable to Victorians on the lowest incomes who are at risk of homelessness.
- Effectively the plan is to reduce the proportion of social housing renters living across these sites from 100% to approximately 37%.
- The only reason given for this reduction is to reduce levels of government investment.
- These 44 sites represent valuable and irreplaceable social housing assets which are ideally located close to transport, employment and services. They are exactly the types of locations where the lowest income Victorians need to live. They have been allocated for social housing by previous generations of Victorians and their value should be used exclusively to increase the supply of social housing.
- The current plan will not only be a lost opportunity to increase the supply of social housing across inner Melbourne for an additional 19,000 Victorians – it will also contribute to a growing geographical divide. There will be a much lower proportion of low income Victorians living in these inner city locations – contributing to decreasing levels of social diversity and increasing the potential for social division.
We are calling on the government to change the current plan so that at least 70% of all housing redeveloped across these sites is social housing – either public or community – and the remaining 30% is all affordable rental housing.
We also call for improved business cases and rigour to inform implementation, and greater engagement with residents in decision making.
You can download and read our submission from the link here.