Home Parks and Retirement Villages.

The Palaszczuk Government is bringing in a huge range of reforms to make life more secure for people in manufactured home parks and retirement villages.

I have been working with the Minister for Housing and Public Works for years, to get better protections for residents in the home parks, and working with home park residents for nearly 20 years to see real change.

These changes will enhance the rights of residents through enforceable behavioural standards, focusing on how park owners, staff and residents interact. There will now be a formal resolution process, which will encourage in-park dispute resolution.

Residents cannot be prohibited from forming resident’s or home owners committees. Another outlawed practice is imposing fees on visitors.

From June 2019 there will be a new pre-contractual disclosure process with a 21-day “cooling-off” period.

These changes are a win for local residents, and deliver huge improvements to their lifestyles.

For retirement villages, we will see more standardised retirement village residence contracts, operators required to prepare plans for a village wind down or closure, redevelopment, and change of operator, with these plans approved by residents or the department.

Further changes for retirement villages will include greater transparency and consistency of reporting for funds, budgets and financial statements

These latest reforms are part of the Palaszczuk Government’s $1.8 billion Queensland Housing Strategy 2017-2027 to deliver greater housing security for Queenslanders.