WEALTHY home owners are being given free and cut-price renovations under a publicly funded heritage scheme.
Scores of owners of blue-chip, inner-city houses have been paid to transform their houses, regardless of their income. Under the fund, residents are able to apply for handouts or low or zero-interest loans for external renovations.
Homes in East Melbourne and Parkville, where properties regularly sell for more than $1 million, are among the most likely to benefit from the scheme.
The Herald Sun has been denied access to the full list of recipients.
The Heritage Council website heralds the transformation of a row of three high-end terraces in East Melbourne in 2004-05.
The facades of the two-storey terraces appear to have been fully restored.
Under the rules, the grants or loans must be used to restore features visible from the street and can include painting that reinstates the period style or colour scheme.
Restoration of the facades has the potential to add substantially to the value of buildings.
The handouts do not include internal renovations and are confined to the City of Melbourne.
Almost $820,000 was lent in 2003-04; more than $650,000 in 2004-05; and more than $480,000 in 2005-06. The fund has assets of $2.
4 million.
The City of Melbourne has released to the Herald Sun a list of 22 properties where owners last year were offered grants or loans totalling $443,000.
Of these, half were either from Parkville or East Melbourne.
The cost of renovating the three East Melbourne terraces has not been revealed.
Other suburbs to benefit from the fund in 2005 included Carlton, the CBD, South Melbourne, North Melbourne, West Melbourne and Kensington.
More than $6 million has been handed out in grants and loans since 1988, the Heritage Council says.
The scheme is overseen by a committee of management comprising representatives of the City of Melbourne, Heritage Victoria, the Victorian Heritage Council and the National Trust.
In 1999, the fund was also extended to other council areas, including Bayside, Boroondara, Darebin and Glen Eira, but those funds have since been exhausted.
Heritage Victoria executive director Ray Tonkin said the scheme encouraged work on buildings of heritage importance.
There is a desire to get people to do works that they may not otherwise do, Mr Tonkin said, adding the scheme was well-positioned and not designed to be a giveaway.
Heritage Victoria originally undertook to release the addresses of all buildings that had benefited.
But it later said privacy provisions meant the addresses would not be made available.
Claire Miller, a spokeswoman for Planning Minister Rob Hulls, said the fund had the Government's full backing.
Melbourne's heritage is one of the things that make this city so great, Ms Miller said.
Opposition scrutiny of government spokesman Richard Dalla-Riva asked why the fund disadvantaged low-income earners.
Hands up those in Victoria who would like a tax-free loan without repayments ndash; ever, Mr Dalla-Riva said.
You would have to question it for the use of personal property.
I think the fact that residents are benefiting from taxpayers' money is highly questionable and it should be reviewed.
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