Everybody should have access to adequate, appropriate and affordable housing. Government housing policies and programs should be based on the principle that housing assistance must be provided equitably to people in different forms of housing (home owners, private renters, public renters).
THE single pension $30 clawback by the NSW Government is in limbo at the moment, after a meeting held with the Minister for Housing, Frank Terenzini, housing and pensioner stakeholders.
The meeting was convened to hear the arguments from both sides of the debate about whether single pensioners should be able to keep the entire $30 weekly rise they received in September 2009, or whether 25 per cent of it should go to state housing authorities, in accordance with the rent-tied-to-income policy.
THIS September, single pensioners living in public or community housing will have to pay an extra $18.40 per fortnight in rent, because the NSW Government has refused to exempt their $30 weekly pension increase from rent calculations.
Read more: Single pension indexation rise wiped out by Housing NSW
THE NUMBER of community and public housing dwellings has been dropping.
Despite the Federal Government’s $1.9 billion stimulus funding to construct 6,000 social housing dwellings in NSW by 2012, the number of dwellings has actually dropped from 146,704 in 2007/08 to 144,439 as at June this year.
REPLACING incandescent light bulbs with energy efficient, compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) is both good for the environment and your hip pocket, reducing your electricity usage over the life of the bulb.
by Robert Mowbray, Older Persons Tenants' Service (OPTS)
The NSW Government passed the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (‘2010 Act’) in June. The new legislation will commence after the Regulations have been finalised, expected to be at the end of this year.
Read more: New residential tenancies legislation: two steps forward, one step back