Social housing should be energy-efficient, use renewable energy and be beautiful.
To report something more creative and lasting than cash hand outs, the Australian government has begun building thousands of new homes for homeless people and low income earners across the nation.
The first round of its economic stimulus package involved billions of cash hand outs to eligible Australians, with the aim of boosting public consumption.
This is the government’s second round, involving 20,000 new social housing dwellings, with three quarters of them to be completed by the end of 2010.
The project is aiming to create 15,000 jobs nationally and protect more people from becoming homeless.
Let’s hope that plenty of such innovative, positive incentives, including solar energy grants, will flow from the G20 resolve.
Let’s also hope that such public housing projects will pay full attention to energy-efficiency, renewable energy use and weatherization. Poorer people need these things most of all.
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