THE first slabs for houses being delivered under the Office for Regional Housing’s Regional Key Worker Housing Scheme has been laid in Mount Gambier/Berrin.
There will be six houses being delivered to the region under this program with four being on Wireless Road West and two on Granite Court.
The homes on Wireless Road West will include two three-bedroom houses and two two-bedroom houses while Granite Court will host two two-bedroom homes.
The Minister Nick Champion commented on the development in Parliament last week after being prompted by Member for Mount Gambier Troy Bell.
Mr Champion confirmed there were four slabs which were recently laid in Mount Gambier/Berrin on top of the houses already built.
“We have just laid the slabs on maybe four allotments at Mount Gambier and the member went there and had a look at the site more recently,” Mr Champion said.
“Obviously these are reasonably humble beginnings, we want to scale-up the Office of Regional Housing, the purpose for us beginning with 30 houses which has now stretched to 35 thanks to the Member for MacKillop’s very strong advocacy for this.”
He said councils in the Member for MacKillop Nick McBride’s region were “among the first” to talk about the importance of regional housing.
“We wanted to create a model that could be scaled up and could work for the next decade and we have set about doing that,” Mr Champion said.
He also commented on how important it was to work alongside local governments following the Tatiara District Council’s initiative to purchase a block of land in the centre of town.
According to Mr Champion, the state government has since purchased five out of the 15 allotments to develop public housing.
“It is something of a pre-commitment to get the project going, to de-risk it for the council and that is a very important thing,” he said.
