Social Housing Management Transfers Program

⁠⁠⁠The Future Directions for Social Housing in NSW launched on 24 January 2016 provides a blueprint for the reform of the social housing sector in NSW. The strategy proposes an expanded set of options for addressing the needs of people seeking social housing assistance. This includes a large scale transfer of management rights to non-government providers.

To support the new policy approach, Future Directions outlines a plan for large scale transfers of property and tenancy management from FACS to Community Housing Providers (CHPs). Under the transfers plan up to 35% of public housing properties will be contracted to CHPs for tenancy and property management.

Key features of the Social Housing Management Transfers (SHMT) Program are:
* The transfer of approximately 18,000 public housing properties to community housing providers under management contracts with terms of up to 20 years
* Approximately 14,000 of these properties will be transferred through a competitive process in tranches over 3 years starting in 2016-17.

This SHMT Program RFT process relates only to these 14,000 properties.

It is anticipated that under the SHMT Program FACS will award up to nine (9) transfer packages in four Whole of Location (WOL) areas, comprising approximately 14,000 properties for management by CHPs.

The SHMT Program will be implemented through a commissioning process open to existing registered CHPs and new entrants capable of achieving registration through the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH).

Under the SHMT Program, organisations will be invited to apply for the right to take on management of up to nine packages of social housing properties located in the following areas of NSW:
* Shoalhaven
* Mid North Coast
* Hunter New England, excluding the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie local government areas
* Northern Sydney, excluding the Ivanhoe Estate.

This notice is to inform interested parties that the SHMT Data Room is now open for access. Groups and organisations with the technical capacity and interest in managing social housing and associated services are encouraged to register to access the SHMT Data Room.

The information in the SHMT Data Room provides prospective applicants with information about the properties of packages to be tendered under the SHMT Program. This will allow organisations to make an informed decision to tender for one or more of the packages being offered and inform the contents of their tender submission.

The Request for Tender documentation will be released at the commencement of the official SHMT Program RFT process and will be made available through the data room. It is anticipated that the RFT process will commence in March 2017.

To register for access to the SHMT Data Room, an entity must first complete the online Registration Form via the SHMT Program website: http://www.facs.nsw.gov.au/reforms/social-housing/management-transfer-program/registration-for-data-room.

Registrations for access to the SHMT Data Room will close at 5:00pm Australian Eastern Daylight Time (Sydney) on the final working day prior to the opening of the RFT process. This will be announced in early 2017.