Following our evidence given at the Senate Economics Legislation Committee (the Senate Committee) Inquiry, UDIA National supports the recommendations to pass the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) Bill, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council Bill and supporting amendments as the right move to close the affordable housing gap, boost housing supply and accelerate housing affordability.
Once enacted, the Bill would enable the Government to immediately activate investment from the critical $10bn Future Fund for affordable and social housing, design the investment mandate for delivering funds for housing and begin to target, monitor and manage housing supply around the country.
“This crucial milestone that will involve the entire market working together – Governments, CHPs and private housing providers – in a shared objective to combat the chronic shortage of affordable and social housing. If we don’t act now, we will soon see an irrevocable change to the demographics of our towns and cities, forcing young families to live further away from their support networks, skewing workforce participation and hobbling productivity,” said Maxell Shifman, UDIA National President.
Even to deliver the State and Federal Government promise of 50,000 houses over 5 years through the HAFF and the Accord, Government and CHPS would need to double their annual rate of affordable and social housing delivery. This is a significant issue as they are currently producing little over 8,500 dwellings a year.
There has never been a greater need to pump-prime housing supply. Even with housing demand crashing by 49% for greenfield land and new supply dropping by 40%, greenfield lot prices have risen by 20% on average. That is bad news for closing the housing shortfall, unless we start boosting development ready land immediately.”
The true falls in the greenfield completions data has been masked by the brought-forward productivity gains from Homebuilder 1 & 2 – which were critical to pulling Australia through the pandemic shutdowns. UDIA calls on all States around Australia to echo the Federal progress and move to incentive-based policies to boost dwelling supply.
The apartments sector, particularly in the capital cities, is where the supply battle will be won or lost. The collapse in market supply and increasing costs are driving more demand to the social and affordable sector and the answer lies both in enabling apartment precincts with mixed tenure, just as much as the pipeline of development-ready land for the greenfield sector.
“UDIA National has recognised the impending crisis and is developing the Development Ready Land Pipeline metric that will enable Government to identify, manage and resolve barriers to housing supply. We are keen to work with Government to formulate a HAFF investment framework that is critical to addressing the housing shortage,” said Mr Shifman.
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Media Enquiries:
Deanna Lane | National Media & Communications Manager | 0416 295 898 | media@udia.com.au