The recent government statement on rental housing is nothing other than a weak and ineffective attempt at deflection from the obvious reneging of their now twice repeated manifesto commitment to build extra housing for government rental.
Last week’s GBC interview with the Minister for Housing was clear – he said that the government was not committing itself to rental housing and would only build for the elderly. The 2011 and more importantly, 2019 manifestos committed them to constructing more rental housing stock both for the elderly and the general housing list. This glaring departure from what was promised at election time to what is being said now has quite properly been exposed by the GSD.
The government has been given an opportunity to apologise and correct the record. What it has done, however, is confirm that they are U-turning big-time from their twice repeated manifesto commitment. They are clearly saying they WILL NOT be building new rental housing stock for those on the general housing list despite their original commitment to do so.
Damon Bossino, the shadow minister for Housing said: “The government cannot get away from the fact that this is a significant change of tack and they should have the decency of at least admitting the drastic change in policy so that a mature political debate can be had on a proper and honest footing and not on the basis of falsehoods.”
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