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The innovative agreement sees the South Australian government come together with a developer and social housing provider to deliver a 680-home community.
Though it has been in the planning stages for many years, the South Australian government has announced that ground has officially broken on the social housing aspect of the development in Oaklands Park.
To be named Oaklands Green, the development sits on a site that formerly hosted housing authority homes built in the 1950s.
In its newest phase, the 16.5-hectare site between Barry Road, Bombay and Doreen streets will be developed to include 235 new social housing dwellings, built for the SA Housing Authority to be managed by community housing provider Junction, and 450 market-ready homes. The agreement provides for at least 15 per cent of the private homes to be sold through the government’s HomeSeeker initiative at an affordable housing price point.
Oaklands Green is the state’s largest consolidated housing renewal project since Westwood in the early 2000s. The government reported that because of the innovative partnership between the SA Housing Authority, Junction and developer Housing Renewal Australia Oaklands Park (HRA OP), the social housing renewal will be delivered at no capital cost to the government.
HRA OP will provide the required funding to deliver the project, and is offering investment opportunities.
Social housing options will include apartments and detached dwellings, with Rivergum Homes having officially commenced construction on the first 28 of these one- and two-storey dwellings.
The project will be staged over eight years, with sales of the first three stages underway.
Calling it a “long time in the making”, South Australian Minister for Human Services Nat Cook commented that the government is committed to “offering choice and diversity in housing” while “modernising affordable and social housing neighbourhoods”.
Nicholas Symons of the SA Housing Authority added that the government would be looking to foster partnerships such as the one on view here to “provide social housing, as well as increase the supply of housing to the market, at a time of critical housing shortage”.
Moreover, Trevor Cooke, HRA chair and Junction deputy chair, said the project set a “new national benchmark for how social housing can be delivered in genuine partnership between governments, for-purpose organisation and socially responsible investors and businesses”.
“For every two residences being built for the open market at Oaklands Green, one will be developed as social housing and provided back to the state under the management of Junction,” he noted.
“We are hopeful that it can be a model for future development of affordable and social housing in South Australia,” Mr Cooke said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
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