27 April 2012

7.30 ACT April 27th

| johnboy
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This in from our friends at the ABC:

    1. Clyde Collapse – a landslide closed the King’s Highway and cut connections between Canberra and the coast for a week. Now open but how safe?

    2. Lyneham Loss – a family in grief must vacate the family home. It is government housing and as the “tenant” has died, they have no option but to relinquish the property

    3. Jim Keays – 60s rocker, Jim Keays is making a comeback – despite a diagnosis of cancer five years ago.

    4. Canberra Teens – it seems this over-planned city neglected the teenagers – as Mike Willessee reported for TDT in 1967.

    5. Antarctica – an exhibition at the National Archives.

    Closer: Anzac Day dawn service at the AWM.

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Very aware of a family who were Govvy tennants for over 60 years. 2 beddy in an inner north suburb, 7 kids, so the gov built them a glorified chook house for the parents bedroom.

Dad was given the opportunity to buy for many years, but declined.

The kids moved away, the parents passed away, and the property was sold for a mill plus, proceeds to the ACT gov. (US!).

The swings and roundabouts of property ownership.

Public housing? Just set up a teepee on Lake Ginninderra and you’ll be offered three units within a couple of weeks. Don’t bother being forgotten on a waiting list for more than five years like the rest of us plebs. And if you can get someone calling themselves “an Aboriginal elder” supporting your cause all the better.

DHCS should lift thier game and start filtering some of these spongers out of the system. People who desparately need housing are on the streets whilst others who have outgrown the need for housing are not accountable. We cannot afford to spoon feed bludgers any longer. Once your established you should be on your own. Heaps of others have to struggle under the burden of a mortgage and young family. Canberra was very different 50 years ago when the commonwealth government was encouraging growth and tipping in the dollars. Self government brings responsibilities that seem to be on the backburner.

johnboy said :

And they want to “pay market value” for it but not what it goes for at auction?

Frankly I’m disgusted with the media support these spongers have had.

Absolutely. I was watching waiting for the point where they explained just why the bleep they were entitled to it. The argument they were making sounded more akin to a native title claim – “We’ve had a family link to this house for 50 years.”

I do want to throw out a red card though to Solly for his “joke” after the Clyde Mountain story about them “not breaking too many” road rules when filming it -deadly road where jerks break the rules often – that isn’t funny!

johnboy said :

And they want to “pay market value” for it but not what it goes for at auction?

Frankly I’m disgusted with the media support these spongers have had.

Why don’t they just go to the auction? That will determine fair market value on the day (to those who bid).

screaming banshee2:20 pm 28 Apr 12

The Brisbane couple I referred to were saying that they could have the last 30+ years rent paid applied to the market value as part of the scheme up there, reducing the purchase price to virtually nothing. Lazily I assumed that it would be the same here.

Grrrr said :

If I-filed is correct about the rental assessment, that should probably be changed to something harder to rort, like quarterly assessment based on income for the entire previous quarter (or similar.)

What about simply check against the previous years tax return? If the review of their tax shows they declared less income to housing than ATO, then work out the difference and send em a bill. I always thought that data-matching was a very active part of what they do, to catch exactly these people.

The reason why the family didnt purchase the house, is probably due to the asset value. If they bought the house for their mother, then it would have probably affected her centrelink income which would then be means tested. If they bought the house themselves and rented it to her, she’d have to justify the situation to Centrelink.

Madam Cholet12:46 pm 28 Apr 12

johnboy said :

And they want to “pay market value” for it but not what it goes for at auction?

Frankly I’m disgusted with the media support these spongers have had.

That.

Glad I wasn’t the only one who had these thoughts.

screaming banshee said :

I am strongly against housing commission tenants being able to purchase a property at a discount

So, you’re strongly against something no-one in the ACT can do? ACT Housing offers the opportunity to purchase at market rate: http://www.dhcs.act.gov.au/hcs/sale_to_tenants_scheme

If I-filed is correct about the rental assessment, that should probably be changed to something harder to rort, like quarterly assessment based on income for the entire previous quarter (or similar.)

Sorry, that should be “equates to about $65,000 a year”

Possibly because the feds stump up subsidy cash and don’t require stringent processes, ACT Government’s “income check” on public housing tenants is very remiss. I know a tenant who earns $84,000 per annum as a government contractor for the five months between her six-monthly income checks (that equates to about $85,000 a year). Come checkup day, she is back on welfare. ACT Government don’t take account of the income other than on the two fortnights she is required to declare. So for the last five years she has been paying the dole rent rate – some $3,000 per annum – to live solo in a three-beddie (in an inner-inner suburb), on an income which should warrant full market rent.

tommy said :

Apparently never bothered to help out grandma buy the ‘family home’ for the last 20 years since the scheme was available.

+1

After the death of one parent a few years earlier, this family must surely have known that this was inevitable when Grandma died?

Would love to know how they have managed to get so much media coverage when all they want to do is have a whinge. Perhaps a friend of the family works in the media? But coverage on the 7.30 report and The Canberra Times on the same day seems a bit of overkill.

If the house meant so much to them, they had the choice to help grandma buy it years ago and they chose not to do that. Not interested in their boo hooing now.

tommy said :

7.30 Act is repeated on digital TV. However, if you miss it check out their archives (it is about 2 weeks behind) 730 ACT Archive

On the Lyneham article, it was interesting that the family lived there as boarders with their mother. And only when the gravy train stopped they now want to buy the house? Apparently never bothered to help out grandma buy the ‘family home’ ( Sale to Tenants ) for the last 20 years since the scheme was available.

If the children and their families lived there as boarders then mother would have been in contravention of her lease with ACT Housing (no businesses to be run at residences) and she would also have to register the property with the ACT Government as a boarding house (I believe).
Why doesn’t the mother’s deceased estate (I presume the family are executors/trustees) negotiate with the ACT Government to buy the property. If they were successful it wouldn’t be the first time a dead person had received a benefit from a Labor government ($900 cheques from Rudd’s GFC rescue, re-incarnation in Qld so they could vote for Labor etc. etc.) Just a thought that it might work.

screaming banshee9:25 am 28 Apr 12

Public housing tenants should have their tax returns reviewed annually. I knew a couple in Brisbane that between them were earning 130k+ a year in 2001, they were living in the guys parents commission home because his parents had bought a retirement property in Harvey bay.

I am strongly against housing commission tenants being able to purchase a property at a discount just because they have lived there paying below market rent for x number of years.

7.30 Act is repeated on digital TV. However, if you miss it check out their archives (it is about 2 weeks behind) 730 ACT Archive

On the Lyneham article, it was interesting that the family lived there as boarders with their mother. And only when the gravy train stopped they now want to buy the house? Apparently never bothered to help out grandma buy the ‘family home’ ( Sale to Tenants ) for the last 20 years since the scheme was available.

And they want to “pay market value” for it but not what it goes for at auction?

Frankly I’m disgusted with the media support these spongers have had.

I’d like to know if 7.30 report is repeated because I missed the Lyneham loss story..

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