Grocon has donated $270,000 to social and affordable housing through the Homes for Homes scheme, established by the Big Issue in 2013. Grocon raised the money for the donation through the sale of apartments in the ARM Architecture-designed Portrait building, in Melbourne.
Homes for Homes, which is based on a similar initiave in the USA, encourages both large developers and individual home owners to make a tax-deductible donation of 0.1 percent of the sale price of a property.
Grocon is the first developer to become involved in the scheme and a contribution will be donated by the developer in all future projects where Grocon is involved in apartment sales.
The Big Issue chief executive officer Stephen Persson said in a public statement that Grocon’s involvement represented a positive move towards getting other developers on board.
“Homelessness is a significant issue facing many thousands of Australians. We have a critical shortage of over 170,000 affordable houses, and every night over 105,000 people in Australia are homeless,” he said.
“This is the first step to creating a long term and sustainable funding source for affordable housing.”
The thirty-one-storey Profile building was unveiled last month in Swanston Square, with a striking eighty-five-metre-high portrait of prominent Aboriginal leader William Barak.
Due to the nature of property sales, the Homes for Homes scheme has a long term focus, with the first affordable or social houses projected to be built within four or five years.
