THE Office of Housing has paid close to $4 million for a disused aged care facility in Box Hill.

Dwellings on the 2480 square metre site, opposite the Box Hill Tennis Club and near the Surrey Hills and Burwood suburb borders, are expected to be refurbished before being made available to public housing tenants.

The purchase continues a trend of the Federal Government, and associated public housing service providers snapping up prevalent development sites all around Melbourne and Victoria.

Some of the biggest public housing projects are currently under construction in Abbotsford, Ashwood, Carlton, Ringwood and Wonthaggi.

THE Monash City Council didn’t want it – but Planning Minister Justin Madden did - and now one of the south-eastern suburb’s biggest public-private housing developments is set to start construction soon, in Clayton.

After more than ten years of debate, a $270 million apartment-based complex will replace a low-rise shopping centre at the busy north-east corner of Dandenong and Blackburn roads.

Approximately 400 apartments will be developed as part of The Nova Centre redevelopment – many to accommodate public housing residents, and students. A hotel and shopping centre will also be built on the site.

A MAJOR but confidential Expression of Interest campaign seeking residential rental properties - believed to be for the government’s affiliated affordable and social housing agencies – has closed after almost six months.

The advertisement sought 400 unoccupied dwellings nationally, configured as motel rooms, blocks of flats, disused retirement villages, and clusters of units and houses.

The mystery tenant is offering 12 month leases with renewal options of up to five years on a case by case basis.

THE federal and state governments are continuing to buy development sites and vacant properties that it can convert into public housing.

It has recently acquired two prominent properties in the seaside hamlet of Wonthaggi, about 132 kilometres south-east of Melbourne.

In the highest profile deal, the government outmuscled developers and operators for the former Golf Links Hotel, which is set to be redeveloped into a major rooming house.

At another site at 7 Mortimer Street, near the Wonthaggi town centre, a vacant block offering picturesque views over the Wonthaggi Golf Course and Bass Strait is also set to make way for a new commission flat complex.

VICTORIAN Planning Minister Justin Madden has paved the way for one of the state’s biggest public housing-based estates to be developed in Melbourne’s south-east.

The $140 million Ashwood Chadstone Gateway project affects six major development sites in Ashwood and Chadstone, near the Chadstone Shopping Centre.

With ministerial approval given on Thursday, the public housing project is expected to start construction in July.

Commission flat towers will rise between four and seven levels at sites around Warrigal Road, the Holmesglen and Jordanville train stations, and around the Ashwood Reserve and Harlequin Rugby Club.

ANOTHER former commercial building in Abbotsford is being converted into a major residential project.

The former Harold Boot Company factory, at the corner of Gipps and Nicholson streets, is being redeveloped by Common Equity Housing Limited, and the Office of Housing, into a $25 million, five-storey, 59-unit complex.

Twenty five apartments – representing just over 40 per cent of the overall project – will be set aside as public housing, part of the Federal Government’s plan to build 80,000 social and affordable dwellings nationally by 2012.

THE State Government of Victoria is formalising a plan to redevelop one of central Melbourne’s largest undeveloped sites, at the riverfront junction the CBD merges with Southbank and Docklands.

Between the Mission to Seafarers building at the corner of Wurundjeri Way and Siddeley Street, and stretching almost the length to the Charles Grimes Bridge, the massive 1.24 hectare site, accommodating old industrial sheds in a precinct called Flinders Wharf, has a 230 metre frontage to the Yarra River.

A Registration of Interest campaign was quietly launched by the government this week, seeking advice from consultants and developers to propose a new future for the site, likely to incorporate offices, shops and apartment towers, possibly with a component of affordable and social housing.

WHILE attention in Geelong’s this week has circled the ‘approved-by-stealth’ public-private housing redevelopment of the city’s former TAFE site, another high profile property - given the green light last year to become one of the federal government’s 80,000 social and affordable new dwellings – failed to sell at auction.

Grey concrete silos at 46 – 48 Mercer Street, at the corner of Roy Street, and near the town centre – has now been listed for private sale through Colliers International at $1.95 million.

A 40-unit affordable housing development has been approved to be developed within the walls of the high-rise silos, prominent on the drive in to Geelong.

The Rudd government aims to substantially boost the number of social and affordable houses nationally by 2012.

THE Federal Government’s contentious plan to build record amounts of commission flats and social housing around your streets, and without proper community consultation – seems to finally have caught the attention of the wider community.

Despite anger in some States that details about the mass roll-out of commission flats have been deliberately kept from the community – the State ALP governments are pushing ahead with major public housing projects.

State governments need to do so in an attempt to collect part of the massive taxpayer-funded $5.6 billion the Federal ALP government has allocated to the initiative, for projects completed before a 2012 deadline.

AFTER a decade of debate, the Minister for Planning Justin Madden has gone against the local council and approved a major development, at a prominent junction in Melbourne’s south-east suburb of Clayton.

The decision paves the way for a low-rise shopping centre on the north-east corner of Dandenong and Blackburn roads to be demolished, and replaced with towers incorporating about 400 apartments, a hotel, a new shopping centre, and landscaped gardens.

About 10 per cent of units in the project will be set aside for affordable housing. Most of the remaining units will be targeted to students. Sources speculate the project will have an end value of about $270 million.

THE VICTORIAN Government has appointed Australand as the preferred builder for one of the state’s largest public and private housing developments.

Australand plans to transform about 18 hectares in the north-west suburb of Westmeadows, near the Melbourne Airport, into a $160 million mixed-use village of apartments, townhouses, aged care accommodation and parks.

The Valley Park project spreads across a dozen Westmeadows streets, including the major Dimboola Road and Erinbank Crescent.

PUBLIC housing residents in an award-winning estate, in Shepparton, are resorting to sleeping outside, because their homes are too hot.

One resident of the Channel Estate in West Shepparton described the temperature of their homes as being “like a microwave” – often 10C to 15C hotter than outside.

The Dennis Family Corporation  development won an award for excellence in the Urban Development Institute of Australia in the best affordable development category, the Herald Sun reports.

ALMOST 50,000 people are on waiting lists for public housing in New South Wales, making it the worst performing state in Australia.

According to a new report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, NSW also recorded the highest rate of “over-crowding and under utilisation” in the country.

It said some households have had to wait more than two years for a home.

A RECORD number of social housing is being developed in Queensland this year, as part of the Federal Government’s recent stimulus package.

And the ALP State Government has said it won’t let protesters get in the way of construction.

The Courier Mail reports about 3000 units worth $1.1 billion are set to be developed in the State.

AUSTRALIA’s most populated state will make way for the biggest chunk of public housing, promised by the Federal Government as part of the recent stimulus package.

At least 48 projects across New South Wales have been identified, as the first projects in part of a $2.9 billion public housing building boom for the State.

Developments are set to be developed around Sydney, Lake Macquarie, Ulladulla and Far South Coast.