Australia’s growing shortage of affordable/social housing and spiralling affordability are entirely connected.
Both are the consequence of the same problem – an ongoing lack of housing supply across the spectrum – including social, affordable, at-market, crisis and investor housing for rental stock.
The shortfall in new housing supply stems from multiple, compounding factors: shortages of development-ready land, materials, and skilled labour, planning delays, development charges/taxes and increasing complexity – driving up the cost and therefore the price of new dwellings. As a result, ordinary Australians are forced to pay more for homes (if they can afford to purchase), or they rent for longer at higher rates, with many inevitably pushed into government support or social housing.
These systemic housing issues must be tackled to reverse this trend, improve productivity, and stem price growth.
State and Territory Governments are ideally placed to align private developer and CHP incentives across tax, planning and landholding to accelerate affordable housing at scale, irrespective of the organisation delivering the housing. The Federal Government has an important role through the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA), to help states/territories make these changes.
Our full Submission can be downloaded via the link below