We knew this day would come from the minute Jon Stanhope bulldozed Andrew Barr’s promises the closed schools wouldn’t be sold to property developers.
The Canberra Times today is buttering us up for the apartment blocks to march across the playing fields.
The Housing Industry Association’s executive director for the ACT and Southern NSW, Caroline Lemezina, said yesterday that many of the sites would be ideal for affordable housing and aged-care accommodation.
“They’re good areas to develop,” she said. “We have real problems with first-home buyers being able to enter the market. We should look at affordable housing on sites, but also housing for elderly people.”
Affordable housing and aged care? How could we possibly say no? The only surprise is they left out a promise to be kind to puppies.
But look, lets get serious. It may be tempting to have the closed schools stand as a momument to the realities of the Stanhope Government, but he can’t waste ALL the money that would come from flogging off the land, and at some point the extra domiciles hitting the market has to make housing more affordable.
And if reason doesn’t float your boat think of the cute little puppies poor/elderly.
Nyssa also sent in the following as a story:
We all knew it would happen, we just assumed that the Govt would hold off for 2 seconds and assess the impact to the community before the end of 2007. It’s not to be.
Today’s CT discusses the need to sell off the land to ease the “housing crisis”.
Now when Towards 2020 came out, Mr. Barr stated the land wouldn’t be sold to developers. My how times change.
Close schools = land to develop and sell off.
However, if the land is opened up to young families, where will their children go to school as most young families prefer to live close to their child’s school as opposed to being in the next suburb?