Why are so many public homes empty?

Gabrielle de Vietri asks the Victorian Government why there are so many empty public homes in a housing crisis.

Transcript: Right now in my electorate of Richmond, dozens of newly-refurbished public homes in the Atherton Gardens, Collingwood and North Richmond public housing towers are sitting empty. Some residents have told me that some of those apartments were renovated in 2019 and have been empty ever since. On some floors five out of 10 apartments have been sitting empty, and there is a whole block of public homes that are empty on Egan Street in Richmond. We are in the worst housing crisis in our lifetime. Right now there are 120,000 people in Victoria desperate for a public home, but this government has abandoned public housing. Their plan is to demolish 1100 public homes and their plan is to build a total of zero new public homes.

If this government was serious about housing people in need, it would not allow refurbished homes to sit empty while people sleep on the streets. It raises some really serious questions about this government’s plan for public housing. What is this government’s plan with these vacant homes? Why are they sitting empty in the midst of the worst housing crisis in our lifetime? And is this government’s plan to slowly get rid of public housing tenants and hand the land over to private developers, like they have done time and time again?

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