Adelaide water bills will rise by $21 per quarter to help fund a $1.5 billion water infrastructure expansion in the city’s north, to open up new housing development.
Announcing his Housing Roadmap on Tuesday, Premier Peter Malinauskas said the investment in water and sewer infrastructure would remove barriers to the construction of homes and unlock a potential 40,000 allotments in SA over the next four years.
The bulk of the funding would focus on expanding the water and sewer network to greenfield development sites in Adelaide’s northern growth front.
For too long, governments had kicked the can down the road on building water infrastructure, creating a housing crisis, Mr Malinauskas said.
"Sharing the investment across the budget, water customers and developers is the fairest outcome,” he said.
The water bill rises are capped at 3.5 per cent above inflation. From July 1, the average metropolitan residential water and wastewater bill will rise by about $21 per quarter.
Opposition spokeswoman Michelle Lensink said the announcement was “incomplete and in utter tatters”.
“The premier didn’t even talk to SA Water before making these grandiose announcements about greenfields sites,” she said.
“We’re also very concerned that pensioners are going to be asked to contribute to the developments through their water rates. We’re in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis."
The roadmap also includes planning reforms to streamline the code amendment process and land division.
The timeframe to turn an empty block of land into a housing development is expected to be 36-63 months, compared with 54-75 months under the current system.
A new code amendment dashboard will allow landowners to track the progress of rezoning applications, with the average time for a code amendment to be processed cut to just six to nine months.
“Our planning reforms will make it up to 18 months faster to turn a vacant block of land into a new house which will make a real difference to helping more South Australians into their own home,” Mr Malinauskas said.
The government also announced this week that the South Australian Housing Authority will be renamed the South Australian Housing Trust, to “restore community connection” to the public housing brand, established in 1936.
Over the past 30 years, governments have been selling off homes, but this policy has been reversed.
The government says it is also on track to deliver the biggest investment in public housing in decades, fast-tracking construction, with more than 1000 homes projected for completion by 2026.
Commitments to public housing total 4817 homes by 2026, including major updates and upgrades to existing dwellings.
Mr Malinauskas said restoring the Housing Trust brand sent a message that the government was committed to supporting low-income households and vulnerable South Australians.
