Housing Minister John Carey says some public housing applicants have rejected offers to live in Spalding

Spalding has such a bad reputation, the State Government cannot even get people desperate for a home who are languishing on the public housing waiting list to live there, according to Housing Minister John Carey. It comes after City of Greater Geraldton Mayor Shane Van Styn called on the State Government to recommit to the Spalding Precinct Plan, which would see the suburb revitalised through measures including addressing the more than 50 boarded-up public housing properties in the suburb. Mr Carey was asked by Liberal Party leader David Honey in Parliament last Wednesday why 130 public houses, including dwellings less than five years old, were “boarded up” and unavailable to the more than 950 people on the Mid West and Gascoyne public housing list in “desperate need” of a place to live. Mr Carey said some of the properties had been offered to prospective tenants but were turned down because they did not want to live in Spalding, which has a high density of public housing. “Where there is existing high-density public social housing, it is actually difficult to get tenants in,” he said. “Some of the boarded, vacant properties in Geraldton were actually available to tenants on the waiting list, but they did not want to take them up. “That is the sad reality we face — that there are particular suburbs, streets or precincts where tenants do not want to live in public housing, so they are boarded up until decisions can be made about them.” Mr Carey said he had been told by people working with public housing in Geraldton that Spalding homes had been rejected by people who had concerns about living in the suburb, and prospective tenants on the waitlist were not obligated to take up properties offered to them. Some liveable homes have been boarded up to prevent vandalism. Mr Honey went on to ask if it was the minister’s position that all 130 homes which were boarded up in Geraldton were not wanted, or if the maintenance budget for those homes was inadequate, which Mr Carey dismissed. “This is the problem ... there are difficult choices to be made,” he said. “Do we refurbish those properties and bring them back into the system but then face the possibility that there is no demand or do we make the difficult choice, even though it involves short-term pain, of demolishing those homes or selling them back to the market so that we can start to de-densify some of those suburbs?” Member for the Agricultural Region Steve Martin asked the Legislative Council for details on the program for Spalding, including when it would be announced, which leader of the Government in the house Sue Ellery could not confirm.