Community housing providers will be offered financial guarantees designed to lower the cost and speed up building homes as part of a "generational shift" in funding the ACT government believes will support an extra 1000 affordable dwellings.
Treasurer Chris Steel said the centrepiece of next week's ACT budget would be a $641 million investment in affordable, community and public housing, saying the investment was the largest ever in the ACT.
"In uncertain economic times, it is really important to have more homes that are available to provide stability and certainty for Canberra households," Mr Steel said.
Buying existing housing would be part of a hybrid model that combined new construction projects and redevelopments to speed up the number of available homes, the government said.
"The government's always pursued a salt-and-pepper approach, so we expect the new housing to be built right around Canberra," Mr Steel said.
The budget will include $39 million for a loan guarantee scheme to enable community housing providers to access cheaper finance for approved projects.
The government will also spend $364 million over four years for a new public housing pipeline program to fund 450 new publicly owned homes, with more than half to be supported by the Commonwealth's housing future fund.
Community Housing Canberra chief executive Nathan Dal Bon said the budget funding and loan guarantee scheme would be transformative for the community housing sector.
"We're looking at supporting what is going to be hopefully quite a substantial new pipeline of supply for people who need it most in Canberra," Mr Dal Bon said.
"The guarantee is just going to be transformational for us."
Housing Minister Yvette Berry said the ACT had incredibly long and growing waiting lists for housing and the government needed to use every opportunity to build and buy more public housing.
"It is a generational shift in the way that the ACT government is funding public housing, and it couldn't be a more better week to announce even more public housing. We've finally cracked the 12,000 mark in public housing stock," Ms Berry said.
ACT Labor promised before the 2024 election to deliver 1000 extra public and community housing properties over the next eight years, taking the ACT to 13,200 homes by the end of 2030.
New publicly owned homes to be funded in the budget will be classified as territory priority projects, putting them on a fast track through the planning system.
"Looking at our wait list and seeing what people on our wait list are looking for, two-bedroom apartments are where most of the need is. However, we often need homes for families and larger homes, so they are also under consideration," Ms Berry said.
The budget will include $183.4 million in extra funding over four years for public housing repairs and maintenance along with $15.8 million to progressively insource housing repair and maintenance services.
"Most of the insourcing in that will be in the white-collar areas, we'll still need to use contractors over time, but we'll just be operating under a different model," Ms Berry said.
