The boost is for stronger and more affordable housing modifications to protect older homes against natural disasters along Queensland’s tropical coasts. Source: Oast House Archive
The Queensland Government has announced a boost to the Household Resilience Program to help make stronger and affordable housing for low-income home owners in cyclone-prone communities on Queensland coasts.
In a joint statement, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, Deputy Premier Steven Miles and Minister for Energy Mick De Brenni announced that the program will be extended by up to three years, due to a boost of $20 million from the Federal Government.
The Queensland Government estimates that up to 1,100 more homes will be able to benefit from the funding to enable resilience works.
“Reports show Australia spends far more on disaster recovery than it does on preparing for disasters, and that mindset needs to change,” said Federal Minister Murray Watt.
“By making homes more resilient, we can help to reduce the impacts of future disasters, while bringing down insurance costs in the meantime.”
Works eligible for the program include “roof, garage door and house frame upgrades and replacements, roof structural strengthening using external over-batten tiedowns as well as window protection measures such as cyclone shutters or screens.”
The Queensland Government is encouraging low-income Queenslanders owning homes built before 1984 and within 50km of the coast from Bundaberg north to the border of the Northern Territory are encouraged to apply while the program is available.
Further eligibility requirements for the affordable housing works can be found here.
“Queensland is affected by more natural disasters than anywhere else in Australia — in fact we’ve been impacted by over 100 major events since 2011, causing more than $22 billion in damage,” said Palaszczuk.
“Many of the 4,311 low-income households we’ve already helped through the first three phases of our Household Resilience Program are aged over 55 – in fact a third are aged over 65 – and up to 10 per cent of all applicants are uninsured.
The program has already seen success in helping to lower insurance premiums, with the most recent data showing an average reduction of 10.3 per cent for homeowners that made approved works to their homes.
Premier Palaszczuk also stressed that more cost-of-living relief would come in the state budget next week.
“I’d like to reassure all Queenslanders that my government is committed to reducing their cost of living and we will be announcing further measures in the State Budget on 13 June,” Palaszczuk said.
The Queensland Government’s full statement can be read here.
