City Futures Blog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia’s leading urban policy research centre.

City Futures Blog random header image

Australian residential tenancies law reform: a new agenda for 2023 and beyond

Posted by on August 1st, 2023 · Tenancy

By Chris Martin. Originally published in ‘Reforming Residential Tenancies Acts’, a special issue of Parity magazine, by the Council to Homeless Persons.

On 28 April 2023, Australian governments, meeting as the National Cabinet, agreed to develop a new law reform agenda to ‘strengthen renters’ rights across the country’. Housing ministers are now tasked with drafting proposals to take back to National Cabinet in the latter half of the year.

Although no details have yet been produced, the announcement of the national reform agenda is remarkable for two reasons.

First, the agenda is being developed in collaboration by states and territories, co-ordinated through a national forum. This contrasts with the experience of recent decades, when states and territories have almost always gone it alone when reviewing and revising their residential tenancies legislation.

The result is tenancy laws that are increasingly divergent, while gaps have gone unaddressed. The divergences include key topics, such as security of tenure and whether landlords can give termination notices without grounds. The ACT has recently amended its legislation to remove provision for without-grounds terminations, both at the end of the fixed term of a tenancy and during a periodic tenancy, while Victoria allows them only at the end of the first fixed term of a tenancy, but not for subsequent fixed terms or periodic (‘month-to-month’) tenancies. Queensland and Tasmania allow without-grounds terminations at the end of a fixed term, and not periodic tenancies, so tenants can be on a string of fixed terms and still face without-grounds termination. Other jurisdictions still allow terminations without grounds at the end of fixed terms and for periodic tenancies, although the new government in New South Wales has promised to remove them.

Figure 1. Without-grounds terminations across Australia: notice periods, where allowed

 NSWQldSATasVicWAACTNT
End of fixed term60 days2 months28 days60 days90 days*30 daysNot allowed14 days
Periodic90 daysNot allowed90 daysNot allowedNot allowed60 daysNot allowed42 days

*60 days if the fixed term is less than 6 months. End of first fixed term only.

Another area of divergence is family and domestic violence (FDV). Until relatively recently, residential tenancy laws did not make any provision for tenants experiencing FDV. Over the past decade, all states and territories have amended their legislation to address FDV, but taken different approaches. Tenants seeking to stay and remove a FDV perpetrator can do so through FDV order proceedings in New South Wales, Tasmania and the NT, but elsewhere must apply separately to the tenancy tribunal to end the perp’s tenancy. If they want to leave a tenancy early and end their liability, they can give a notice certified by certain professionals in New South Wales, Queensland and WA, but must apply for court or tribunal orders in other jurisdictions. Three states have made changes the rules about tenants’ vicarious liability for damage and other breaches in FDV situations; in other jurisdictions, the usual rules still apply.

Figure 2. Family and domestic violence provisions across Australia

 NSWQldSATasVicWAACTNT
T stays, removes perpFDV order may terminate perp’s tenancyApply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVApply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVFDV order may terminate perp’s tenancyApply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVApply to court, satisfy as to FDVApply to tribunal, satisfy as to DVFDV order may terminate perp’s tenancy
T leaves, ends liabilityT may give notice with evidence/
certificate		T may give notice with evidence/
certificate		Apply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVFDV order may terminate tenancyApply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVGive notice with evidence/
certificate		Apply to tribunal, satisfy as to FDVFDV order may terminate tenancy
Vicarious liabilityTenant not liable for FDV damageTenant not liable for FDV damagePer usualPer usualTenant may apply to dismiss FDV-related termination proceedings  Per usualPer usualPer usual

It is not only on substantial issues that laws are diverging: residential tenancies legislation looks and reads differently across jurisdictions. For example, Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act is about seven times the length of Tasmania’s, and only a little shorter than Melville’s Moby Dick. Although recent amendments have mostly improved the law for Victorian tenants, they have also made the Act a complex, difficult-to-navigate piece of legislation.

The second reason why the National Cabinet’s decision is remarkable is that it expressly states that the reforms should ‘strengthen renters’ rights’. This contrasts with the theme of ‘finding the right balance’ between landlords’ and tenants’ interests that has marked most state- and territory-level reviews, and which has tended to produce only modest improvements while bigger issues of housing justice go unaddressed.

Australian residential tenancy laws are generally very accommodative of landlords and their interests. They present no barrier to landlords entering the rental sector: no training, registration or licensing requirements – all you need is a dwelling to let. (All states and territories require that the dwelling must be fit for habitation, but the onus is on applicants and tenants to police this.)

Tenancy laws also generally allow landlords to exit the sector when it suits them to do other things with their properties, whether that’s selling, or using the property for their own housing or other purposes (e.g. Airbnb). Even those states that have removed or restricted the use of without-grounds terminations still allow termination on grounds such as preparing the premises for sale (Victoria and Queensland).

And as long as they are in the rental sector, landlords can increase rents in line with the general market level of rents for comparable premises. Most jurisdictions have limits on the frequency of rent increases (once in 6 or 12 months), but none limit the amount or rate of increase. The ACT has a legislated ‘guideline’ (1.1 times the rate of the rent index for Canberra in the Consumer Price Index), and landlords seeking rent increases above the guideline must apply to the tribunal and show the increase is not excessive to the general level of rents for comparable premises. This procedural step probably discourages increases above the guideline (which is a good thing), but it is not a firm cap on rents. The issue of rent increases has been conspicuously absent from state- and territory-level reviews.

Research commissioned by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) shows how accommodating Australian tenancy laws are of landlords.[2] In a survey of just under 1,000 landlords, a significant portion (44%) said tenancy laws were a ‘very important’ consideration in their decision to invest; however, of landlords who had disposed of a property, only 14% nominated dissatisfaction with tenancy laws as ‘very important’ to their decision – placing tenancy laws last among a range of possible factors in disinvestment decisions. By far more commonly cited ‘very important’ reasons for disposing of a rental property were ‘it was a good time to sell and realise capital gains’ (50%) and ‘I wanted money for another investment’ (47%).

The research also put to the test the claim that tenancy law reform causes landlords to disinvest. Analysis of rental bond records found no statistically significant increase in properties exiting the Sydney and Melbourne sectors around law reform events in those states (the commencement of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (NSW), and the start of the Victoria’s laws reform review in 2015). In fact, Sydney property exits were slightly lower after the New South Wales reforms.

The most striking finding of the research was how frequently properties enter and exit the rental sector – whether the law is changing or not. In both Sydney and Melbourne, more than half of properties exit within five years of entering the rental sector. Properties churn rapidly through the sector, as it suits their owners – and as a result tenants are churned out of their homes.

While past law reforms have not caused landlords to disinvest, a stronger law reform agenda that is less accommodating of landlords’ interests might have that effect – and that would be no bad thing. Among other reforms, the new agenda should strengthen tenants’ security by getting rid of without-grounds termination, narrowing the scope of termination grounds, and ensuring tribunals can decline termination where it is not justified or would result in homelessness. It should also regulate rent increases, by caps or an ACT-style guideline. Landlords can either meet these standards or leave – and if they do leave, that’s more room for would-be homeowners or for a different, better type of rental housing provider.

The Senate is currently conducting an inquiry into the worsening rental crisis, including issues of renters’ legal rights. To make a submission to the inquiry, see the inquiry website. Submissions close 4 August 2023.

National housing strategies – the time is right

Posted by on July 13th, 2023 · Uncategorized

Hal Pawson and Chris Martin writing for the UK’s leading housing industry magazine, Inside Housing

In what feels like the dying days of an exhausted government, Michael Gove’s Social Housing (Regulation) and Renters (Reform) Bills look like last gasp attempts to breathe life into a housing reform agenda barely on life-support.

True, many of the measures that strengthen regulatory oversight in social housing and tenant security for private renters will be widely welcomed. But, as Matthew Bailes and Charlotte Carpenter point out in their recent story for Inside Housing, these moves lack a grounding in any overarching vision or reform agenda for the wider housing system.

The last such official analysis and position statement for England, ‘Fixing our broken housing market’, is now more than six years in the past. Thus, Bailes and Carpenter rightly echo the National Housing Federation’s recent call for the next government to urgently instigate a more formal and long term national housing strategy for England.

This chimes with policy developments in Australia where, after a decade of federal complacency and inaction, housing stresses have similarly escalated to historic highs. Rent inflation is at record levels, while homelessness has continued to climb, all against a backdrop of ongoing homeownership decline.

Complementing the NHF pitch, our new report calls for Australia’s federal government to chart a coherent national road-map for housing and homelessness reform. With many of our recommendations also relevant to the UK, we outline the goals, scope and institutions an ambitious national strategy needs to succeed in the domestic context.

Unlike both England and Australia where such a project would be without precedent, substantive national housing strategies do, in fact, exist in other countries. As analysed in our report, there is much to be learned from strategy-making experiences in nations such as Canada, Austria and Finland.

Closer to home for Inside Housing readers, there is a lot to be said for the Scottish Government’s ‘Housing to 2040’ policy blueprint. Importantly, this continues a Scottish housing strategy-making tradition incorporating public consultation, goal setting, evaluation and revision.

‘Housing to 2040’ also bears the hallmarks of any meaningful strategy: analysis of problems to be addressed, clear and measurable goals for gauging progress in tackling those problems, identified actions to achieve those goals, and plans for mobilising resources to implement specified actions.

Following Australia’s 2022 general election, the country has a new national government with a degree of housing ambition and an initial suite of policy and investment initiatives to match. Whether Prime Minister Albanese fully recognises the need for a far-reaching long-term strategy of the kind we propose, remains to be seen. But British readers will be envying the scenario where that question can at least be asked.

Towards an Australian Housing and Homelessness Strategy by Chris Martin, Vivienne Milligan, Julie Lawson, Chris Hartley, Hal Pawson and Jago Dodson is published by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI)

This story was first published in Inside Housing. Read the original story here

Vertical schools are increasingly common. This is what students want in ‘high’ school design

Posted by on June 22nd, 2023 · Cities

By Fatemeh Aminpour, UNSW Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The traditional idea of a one-or-two-storey school, spread over a vast campus is no longer an option for some new schools. Population growth and a lack of land in urban areas mean some schools have to go up.

This has seen vertical schools become increasingly common. These are schools that tend to have more than four storeys.

Some academics argue vertical schools are not well suited to children’s need for space and learning. But what do children want?

I asked students for their opinion

My study published this week surveyed students at three vertical schools. The schools had between five and ten storeys and were in Brisbane and Melbourne. They enrol students from the first year of schooling to Year 12.

I interviewed 38 students in years 3 to 7 through walking tours. They led me around their school, telling me what they liked and didn’t like about their environment.

Children still want space to play

Students told me they wanted access to outside and inside play spaces, even when the weather was bad. They said covered terraces, rooftop gardens and wide hallways allowed students to play in rainy weather.

This is where vertical schools can have an advantage over regular schools. Regular schools often have limited indoor play spaces or their covered outdoor learning areas are easily flooded. As one 9-year-old student said:

We play out here [on the terrace] a lot […] when there’s a wet day […] It’s very good to get fresh air when you’re stuck inside.

While vertical schools generally have limited space on school grounds, they are usually built in central urban locations with parks or green spaces close by. These provided children with access to a variety of outdoor environments within walking distance, an opportunity which is not necessarily available in a suburban school.

A roof-top garden, partially covered and can be used during rainy days. Author supplied.

They don’t want to spend breaks climbing stairs

Children had to travel via the stairs multiple times a day, for recess or lunch breaks or to change classes.

Students said having to line up to walk up or down the stairs during the peak recess or lunch time wasted their breaks. This was particularly a concern for the primary school participants in years 3 to 5 who found climbing the stairs “tiring” and said it “hurt [their] legs”.

Children tried to limit their use of stairs by using learning and recreational facilities close to their home rooms, if permitted.

Some common facilities in one of the schools were located on intervening floors, a design feature that children described as “really convenient”. As one 12-year-old student said:

You just need to walk up one or two levels […] and you are at where you want to be.

Play spaces close to home classrooms mean students don’t have to climb stairs. Author supplied.

They don’t want too much noise

Open-plan classrooms and atrium stairways, where the stairs hug the edges of an atrium, are common features in vertical schools.

Students said they were major sources of noise pollution. They complained “the stomping [on the stairs] could be really loud” and “could interfere with [their] learning”. As one 9-year-old student told me:

if someone drops something on level one, you can hear it from level four.

This particularly happens when the learning areas are open to the atrium and the main staircase and therefore the noise travels between the levels.

Research suggests building stairs in the corners of the building and separating them from the atrium can minimise noise. This way vertical movement won’t interrupt any central learning spaces.

A school with stairwells located in the corners and separated from the atrium. This can help reduce noise. Author supplied.

But they want to be able to bump into each other

Children said they wanted ways to meet their friends informally. They did not want to feel closed off in their class groups.

Atriums, wide stairs, and expansive views both inward and outward can promote a sense of community at school. As a 9-year-old student described:

[Kids] can see what’s going on down there and if they see someone, they can knock on the glass and wave. And sometimes kids can watch their friends go to choir on those steps down there and they wave to them.

This type of interaction is important as research shows a sense of community increases children’s emotional attachment to school, resilience and overall sense of wellbeing.

Wide stairs create opportunities for children to interact. Author supplied.

They also want a choice over the use of outdoor spaces

Children would like to choose their preferred outdoor space during breaks, whether they are terraces close to the learning spaces, school grounds or neighbourhood parks. As one 13-year-old student said:

I wish we could sit on [the terraces of] all of the levels […] You’re not allowed to go past level one in your lunch breaks because there is no supervision up here.

While all these opportunities might be present in a vertical school, using them all at the same time poses a challenge to the adult supervision.

Schools struggling with staff shortages may not be able to supervise students in multiple floors and the neighbourhood park during breaks. But this can make spaces overcrowded.

Additionally, vertical movement is strictly programmed in primary schools. Children rely on the teachers taking them upstairs or downstairs before and after the break.

Despite attractive architectural concepts anticipating stair landings for informal interactions, children were unable to pause at their leisure and connect with their environment or each other.

Keep talking to students

Vertical schools provide new opportunities and new challenges for the way students play and learn.

My research shows the importance of including children’s perspectives in the initial stages of school design. While architects may offer innovative visions, they will not be the ones eventually using the spaces they create.

To deliver enough affordable housing and end homelessness, what must a national strategy do?

Posted by on June 20th, 2023 · Government, Housing

By Chris Martin. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Albanese government came to office promising action on housing. Its A$10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund is now stuck in the Senate, with the Greens demanding more ambitious funding and reforms. The government is also working on its promised National Housing and Homelessness Plan.

In research published today by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI), we make the case for a housing and homelessness strategy to be an ambitious national project. Its central mission should be to ensure everyone has adequate housing.

We outline the goals, scope and institutions the strategy needs to succeed. The housing numbers it should deliver to meet demand – including 950,000 social and affordable rental dwellings by 2041 – dwarf current government targets.

Our report draws on new thinking about the need for “mission-oriented” governments to tackle complex problems, as well as policy-making approaches here and overseas.

Why a strategy?

Strategies help to clarify the purpose of action for everyone. They bring together information and expertise that inform and stimulate public discussion. They help define priorities.

This is important for housing and homelessness problems because they are complex. They cross over different policy areas and levels of government. They have diverse causes and broad effects.

By the same token, solving these problems can produce diverse benefits.

The goal of “adequate housing for everyone” – the first target of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 11 – states the challenge clearly.

To meet that challenge, it is useful to think of governments and stakeholders being engaged in a mission that requires government to lead the deliberate shaping of markets and direction of economic activity. Fixing market failures and filling unprofitable gaps in the market isn’t enough.

It’s also useful to think about the special status of governments in financial systems. The Australian government is the issuer and guarantor of money. It can use this status to finance missions for the public good.

For example, for two years of the COVID-19 emergency, the Reserve Bank of Australia bought bonds issued by federal, state and territory governments totalling $5 billion per week. That’s equivalent to one Housing Australia Future Fund every fortnight.

Fragmented approach causes problems

Because Australia is a federation, the federal government must work with state and territory governments to implement policies. Most intergovernmental activity has involved housing and homelessness conceived of as welfare issues.

Responsibility for housing and homelessness policy is divided. The National Housing and Homelessness Agreement guides policy, but is clearly deficient. Development of other policy levers, such as Commonwealth Rent Assistance, has languished.

The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) finances and supports efforts to increase the supply of housing, particularly affordable housing. The NHFIC is becoming increasingly important as its functions expand. It’s getting a new name, Housing Australia, to match its remit.

The financial regulators, the Reserve Bank and the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority (APRA), are arguably conducting housing policy of their own.

Housing policy responsibilities at the state and territory level are similarly fragmented.

Lessons from other national strategies

We examined Canada’s National Housing Strategy. Its rights-based approach, statutory basis and accountability agencies are important innovations.

However, the Canadian strategy is narrowly focused on affordable rental housing. Key issues of tax and finance are beyond its scope. Looking to European housing policy leaders, such as Austria and Finland, we can see the value of broader national strategies and dedicated housing agencies.

We can also learn from other national approaches to policy in Australia, such as Closing the Gap and Australia’s Disability Strategy.

The first lesson is that making a strategy is itself a strategic exercise. Reformers need to develop the capacity to take on and influence established institutions, vested interests and entrenched ways of thinking.

A dedicated lead agency may be needed to coordinate strategy development and implementation. Accountability is crucial. By this we mean more than accounting for the spending of public money. It is also about demonstrating commitment to the reform process and the people it serves.

What should the strategy’s goals be?

The strategy should have a clear mission: everyone in Australia has adequate housing.

The strategy should be comprehensive, with a set of secondary missions:

  • homelessness is prevented and ended
  • social housing meets needs and drives wider housing system improvement
  • the system offers more genuine choice – including between ownership and renting
  • housing quality is improved
  • housing supply is improved
  • housing affordability is improved
  • the housing system’s contribution to wider economic performance is improved.

And what policy areas are covered?

The diagram below shows the strategy’s scope and stages. It begins with the familiar core policy areas covered by the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (bottom left). As the scope of the strategy expands (up and to the right), the intensity of housing policy leadership varies accordingly.

Graphic showing the policy areas to be covered by an Australian Housing and Homelessness Strategy. It indicates 'established core policy areas', 'new core policy areas', 'policy areas for alignment with housing missions', and 'policy areas for articulation with housing missions'.
The policy areas to be covered by an Australian Housing and Homelessness Strategy. AHURI, Author provided

Social housing and homelessness are core policy areas for the strategy. To meet current and future need, it should aim to add 950,000 social and affordable rental housing dwellings by 2041. That’s about 50,000 new dwellings a year – a lot more than the 8,000 a year over five years that the Albanese government has promised so far.

The most cost-effective way to finance this growth is a mix of NHFIC bonds and capital grants from government. State and territory governments should make plans to regularly reassess need and delivery.

Housing assistance, residential tenancies law and building quality should be new core policy areas. The National Cabinet’s recent decision to develop a tenancy law reform agenda to strengthen tenants’ rights is a welcome step.

Housing-related taxation, housing finance and planning and development regimes should be aligned with Australia’s housing and homelessness missions.

Existing national strategies for First Nations and people with disability need strengthening on housing and homelessness as a matter of priority.

The strategy should be laid down in law. The legislation should enshrine the right to adequate housing, nominate Housing Australia as the lead agency, and establish regulatory and accountability agencies.

The author acknowledges his report co-authors, Associate Professor Julie Lawson, Honorary Professor Vivienne Milligan, Chris Hartley, Professor Hal Pawson and Professor Jago Dodson.

A sustainable Australia depends on what happens in our cities – that’s why we need a national urban policy

Posted by on June 5th, 2023 · Cities

By Robert Freestone, UNSW Sydney; Bill Randolph, UNSW Sydney, and Wendy Steele, RMIT University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Australia has not had a national urban policy since the Rudd government. A troika of Liberal PMs followed. Tony Abbott wasn’t interested. Malcolm Turnbull didn’t quite live up to the hype but delivered cross-governmental City Deals and the Smart Cities and Suburbs Program. Scott Morrison at best presided over a business-as-usual approach lacking any resolve, urgency or innovation.

Will this Labor government do any better? Australian cities and regions were not front and centre in the 2022 federal election campaign. But there were signs a Labor government would reinstate a concern for urban policy issues.

The federal budget confirmed the government’s focus on urban policy. It set aside funding for a “national approach for sustainable urban development” and a “cities program”. Last week the government appointed the expert members of the Urban Policy Forum announced in the budget.

These are vehicles for delivering a promised National Urban Policy. The government says this policy “will bring together a vision for sustainable growth in our cities”.

Why focus on cities?

Two in three Australians live in a capital city. Our 21 largest cities are home to 80% of the population.

Cities account for 80% of economic activity in Australia. As globally connected hubs, they are crucial sites for community, commerce, infrastructure, biodiversity, governance and democratic processes. Our cities are central to meeting the challenges of a changing climate.

Map of Australia's 21 largest cities
Our 21 largest cities, with 80% of the population, have a huge role to play in achieving a sustainable future. Australian Urban Observatory, CC BY

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has skin in the game. He was the minister for infrastructure and transport in the Gillard government. He oversaw the first truly national urban policy, Our Cities, Our Future, in 2011.

In 2021, Albanese declared that “cities policy has been one of the abiding passions of my time in public life”. He foreshadowed a new national policy framework.

The budget papers specifically refer to the National Cabinet agreement on April 28 on national priorities. Among these is “Better Planning for Stronger Growth reforms to support a national approach to the growth of cities, towns, and suburbs”.

The budget commits nearly A$400 million over four years in new grants and investments in “Thriving Suburbs” and “Urban Precincts and Partnerships”. Some $11 million goes to a Cities and Suburbs Unit to deliver a National Urban Policy. The policy is required to:

address urgent challenges facing our major cities – from equitable access to jobs, homes and services, to climate impacts and decarbonisation.

Looking down the street of an outer suburban development
Outer suburbs distant from services and workplaces create problems for the sustainability of our cities. R. Freestone, Author provided

An overdue development

Urban development has been “undervalued in national discussion” globally, not only in Australia. But in recent years various bodies, inquiries and forums have pushed for a new-look national urban policy.

The Planning Institute of Australia has long called for a coherent governance framework for spatial plans, infrastructure, growth management and urban renewal. Without a national cities plan, a 2018 report by the institute said, “all jurisdictions will be disadvantaged when making resource allocation decisions and planning for basic enabling infrastructure”.

In the same year, a federal parliamentary inquiry into the Australian government’s role in city development called for “a national plan of settlement, providing a national vision for our cities and regions across the next 50 years”.

In 2019, Future Earth Australia, based at the Australian Academy of Sciences, advanced a ten-year national strategy for sustainable cities and regions. This strategy is aligned with the Australian achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

New ideas for Australian cities and regions

We must take seriously the economic, social and environmental impacts of long-term population growth and development. To become a more equitable and sustainable country, action on the uneven experiences of Australian cities and regions must be a government priority.

In 2021, an Australian Academy of Social Sciences workshop on Australian Urban Policy: Achievements, Failures, Challenges was undertaken jointly at the City Futures Research Centre, UNSW, and Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University. More than 50 researchers and practitioners explored the many issues competing for urban policy attention at the national level.

Key areas included water, climate change, Indigeneity, transport, migration, population settlement and new cities. Urban green space, biodiversity, digital technologies, economic productivity, social inclusion and affordable housing supply were also identified as issues that cut across national policy agendas.

Constitutional constraints mean states must play a leading role in national urban policy. Fortunately, these constraints don’t rule out inter-governmental partnerships. There are many, often poorly integrated policies, programs and initiatives across all levels of government.

There was consensus at the workshop on the need to transcend the political ideology and expediency that have led to fragmented urban policies. A different kind of national politics focused on sustainability, resilience and regeneration is required.

The “secret” to sustainability lies in an integrated national framework of policies and strategies for city-regions. All three tiers of government need to buy into it.

Graphic of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals
Coordinated urban policy action across Australia is needed to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. United Nations

National urban policy redux

There is a “back to the future” quality in some of the Albanese moves. They re-invent Rudd-Gillard initiatives, and Turnbull’s City Deals remain. Action on affordable housing supply and urban inequalities has been less forceful to date.

Sitting alongside what seem like far-reaching environmental actions, including a new Net Zero Authority, the revival of urban policy at the national level is welcome. So too would be the discussion, consultation and research required to secure a resilient and sustainable future.

A national urban policy offers opportunities for cities, towns and regions. It’s also essential if Australia is to meet its national and international obligations, notably the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Australian Urban Policy: Prospects and Pathways is a report on the UNSW-RMIT workshop edited by the authors and with over 30 contributors. It will be published by ANU Press in late 2023.

Leasing your way to owning: how do rent-to-buy schemes measure up against the alternatives?

Posted by on May 31st, 2023 · Housing

By Hal Pawson

If you’re an Australian born after 1995 it’s increasingly unlikely you’ll be buying your first home anytime soon.

The 2021 Census confirmed what had been suspected: the number of people aged between 30 and 34 who owned their own house, had slipped to just 50%.

That’s a drop of 14 percent in 50 years. Meanwhile, the age when people typically first buy a home has gone up from 26 to 32.

With young people facing seemingly insurmountable hurdles to home ownership, policymakers are scrambling to address the problem.

While many of the ideas being floated to help ease the problem have been around for a while, there are some gaining renewed interest. Among them, ’Rent to buy’ (or ‘rent to own’) and ‘Build to Rent to Buy’ (BtRtB) are being seen as possible solutions to add to the housing mix.

Rent to buy and its new variant forms

The basic ‘rent to buy’ (RtB) idea is simple: the aspiring first home buyer leases their dwelling while saving to eventually buy it. Both rent and ensuing purchase price are usually fixed at the start, providing housing stability during the savings period. But there are  hazards.

Rent to buy schemes are generally offered by developers and property companies on the basis that you pay a market rent for your home, plus an additional fee for the option to buy it later. However, depending on the exact terms of your agreement, this can place you at risk of forfeiting your excess rent credit if the property’s value fails to increase as expected. Similarly, you may face difficulties in securing a mortgage if the property turns out to be overpriced at the point of purchase.

Historically, many rent to buy offers were dangerously risky for renter/buyers as, in an unregulated market, customers were open to exploitation by unscrupulous operators. Recognising this hazard, Victoria recently clamped down by introducing new consumer protections: option fees must be banked, and either go to the purchase price or be refunded. But these rules have yet to be adopted nationwide.

A new RtB variant that has recently emerged in Australia is the ‘Build to Rent to Buy’ (BtRtB) model; where the home to be acquired is newly constructed for the purpose. Offering a version of BtRtB as a market product without explicit state support, Assemble Communities has attracted attention for its ongoing  plan to generate 450 units on three Melbourne sites.

A government-backed version of BtRtB has been developed by the Commonwealth Government’s National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC). This factors in a community housing provider as property developer and manager until the tenant takes full ownership after 10 years (if possible). It seeks to use the (assumed) growth in the occupied property value as a contribution to the occupier’s eventual mortgage deposit.

The NHFIC model is now being piloted by Community Housing Canberra, particularly targeting older women in housing stress or at risk of homelessness.

Alternative forms of first home buyer assistance

Build to rent to buy is interesting as an innovative new approach, but in terms of scale, the most significant recent Australian development in this area has been the huge expansion in the provision of government-backed low-deposit mortgages. That resulted from the Morrison Government’s 2020 launch of its First Home Loan Deposit Guarantee Scheme – now the NHFIC First Home Guarantee program. This emulates initiatives long-established in Western Australia and South Australia.

By effectively insuring the mortgage lender against possible borrower default, the government enables qualifying applicants to secure their housing loan for 5 percent deposit rather than the standard 20 percent. While this doesn’t make home ownership affordable for lower income households, it does offer moderate income earners the chance to achieve it much more quickly.

Potentially more effective in enabling slightly lower-income households to access home ownership is the shared equity model. This involves a qualifying first home buyer benefiting from a third party stake in their acquired property. This share, typically around 30 percent, is held by a developer or government agency under a second mortgage.

The buyer, meanwhile, can secure their home for a 30 percent smaller mortgage than would be otherwise needed; this at the cost of sharing subsequent capital gains with the co-investor. When the buyer sells or refinances their home, the third party equity is reclaimed, ideally for re-issuance to a new scheme participant.

As well as the shared equity programs already operated by Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, the Commonwealth Government has pledged to establish a national shared equity scheme named ‘help to buy’. A number of privately-initiated schemes have also been recently launched.

The limitations of first home buyer assistance

These types of schemes complement the cash grants and stamp duty concessions which were, until quite recently, the overwhelmingly dominant forms of first home buyer assistance in Australia. They have the advantage of being less inflationary and more cost-effective than those longer-established schemes.

A new comparative analysis has also assessed shared equity as more advantageous than RtB from the perspective of both residents and investors.

But none of these models does much to bring first home ownership within reach for people otherwise permanently excluded from it by inadequate means. Instead, for most, the main effect is the somewhat lesser gain of bringing forward home ownership for moderate income earners.

This limitation links to the wider concern that sustainable home ownership growth demands systemic change to tackle the much tougher challenge of easing Australia’s broader housing affordability problem.

Thanks to Dr Chris Martin, UNSW, for input into this story

Hal Pawson is a Professor of Housing Research and Policy and Associate Director at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre and lead author of “Assisting first homebuyers: an international policy review”

This story was first published by 360info; read the original story here.

Housing in Federal Budget 2023: small but positive steps

Posted by on May 12th, 2023 · Uncategorized

By Hal Pawson

A housing policy bonanza it most certainly was not, but related announcements in Budget 2023 included some modestly positive steps that supplement the Albanese Government’s existing array of housing initiatives. These included pledged new spending to ease cost of living pressures for hard-pressed renters, and to fund dwelling energy efficiency upgrades in social housing. On the tax side, there was a potentially significant move to encourage institutional investment in purpose-built rental housing.

A boost to Rent Assistance

The most substantial housing-related announcement was the pledge to boost the maximum rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) by 15%, a measure that will benefit 1.1 million claimants at an annual cost of more than $500 million over the next five years, rising to $700 million beyond that.

CRA supplements other social security payments. Therefore, many recipients will be also beneficiaries of other moderately bumped-up benefits including Jobseeker and Youth Allowance, as also announced in the Budget. So all well and good for those in that situation. Resulting relief for domestic budgets should leave these households slightly less hard-pressed, with more after-rent income remaining to fund food, clothing and other essentials.

But while the Government states that the prospective CRA boost represents the largest such increase in 30 years that is not saying much; especially within the context of calls by organisations such as the Grattan Institute and ACOSS for the maximum rate to be lifted by at least 40%.

Even when the new rules take effect, single person payments will remain capped at $90 per week. That in a market where the median weekly rent for advertised units has now reached $550 across the capital cities, and with a NSW lower quartile weekly value of $375 for a 1-bedroom dwelling.

A fundamental problem with CRA – and a reason that even the Productivity Commission has advocated enhancement – is its annual up-rating according to CPI rather than actual rents. When, as is generally the case, market rents run ahead of general inflation, the payment is effectively devalued.

For example, while CPI is currently running at 7%, advertised rents are continuing to escalate at over 10% per year. In Australia’s lightly regulated and fluid rental sector, these increases will wash through the whole market fairly quickly. It is the cumulative effect of under-indexation that has produced CRA’s inadequacy today.

But in reality the scheme has many other structural flaws that call for more fundamental reform. These include the nationally invariant maximum payment rates that ignore huge housing market disparities across the country, and the omission of the working poor, excluded by their ineligibility for other social security benefits to which CRA is tied.

Home energy performance initiative

A second new and notable spending pledge in the social housing arena was the creation of a $300 million fund for energy efficiency investment in public and community housing over four years. With the kinds of works envisaged estimated as costing $5,000 per dwelling, this is expected to fund such upgrades to 60,000 units – or around 14% of all social housing. However, there is also a suggestion that the scheme could be expanded via match funding from state/territory governments.

This is part of a larger Budget-announced scheme to promote residential energy efficiency, the Household Energy Upgrades Fund. The greater part of this is a $1 billion low-cost loan facility to be managed by the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and, according to Treasury, set to benefit 110,000 households.

While these measures have a somewhat progressive flavour, their scale once again appears extremely modest. And a huge strategic problem that remains seemingly unacknowledged and unaddressed is the absence of reliable national data to inform a baseline assessment of housing energy (in)efficiency across all sectors.

One other apparent ‘social and affordable housing investment’ measure featured in the Budget was the ‘$2 billion financing boost [to] support the Government’s commitment to deliver more social and affordable rental homes’ as phrased in a Treasury media release. This extends the existing Government guarantee that enables community housing providers to access low price debt. While it can be welcomed as a useful enabling measure, this is very much a financing initiative that comes at a negligible cost to government and provides no additional funding as such.

Build to rent investment tax adjustment

On the revenue side, perhaps the most significant Budget housing announcements were the technical tax changes to encourage investment in so-called build to rent (BtR) developments. This refers to apartment blocks designed and constructed to be held in single ownership for long term rental use.

Although as yet almost absent in Australia, BtR housing forms a substantial part of the rental sector in North America, in the UK and elsewhere. Being funded by institutional investors to generate a long-term rental income stream, it is arguably likely to provide relatively secure tenure, since – by comparison with renting from a mum-and-dad landlord – there is relatively little risk of eviction due to property sale.

BtR apartments are built to be rented out at market rates and do not contribute directly to affordable housing. But BtR may fulfil other housing policy objectives including well-designed, good quality buildings, as well as extending consumer choice and expanding overall housing supply, to the benefit of housing affordability more broadly. Indeed, a growing BtR sector could help the Commonwealth in meeting its self-imposed target of enabling the construction of 1 million homes over five years.

Perhaps partly motivated by this aspect, the Budget included a pledge to equalise the tax treatment for overseas funds investing via Managed Investment Trusts in BtR projects, relative to MIT investments in assets such as student housing and other commercial property. Applying to schemes of 50 or more units, and subject to blocks being retained under single ownership for at least 10 years, the new rules also require that apartments are rented out on lease terms of at least three years.

This move may be seen within the context of a recent estimate that, subject to the now-announced MIT tax change, the supply of new BtR units over the next decade could triple from the 50,000 currently forecast.

The real housing policy action is – we would hope – elsewhere

While a positive case can be made for all of these moves, they were also ‘of a piece’ with the Budget’s overall caution. Regrettably, although probably not surprisingly, there was no new social housing ‘rabbit from the hat’ investment pledge of the kind that might have proved a game-changer in luring the Senate crossbench to pass the Government’s stalled housing bills. That – along with the still to be revealed National Housing and Homelessness Plan – is where we would hope the action of greater substance will be.

This story was first published in John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations. Read the original version here.

High stakes debate on Albanese government’s social and affordable housing plans

Posted by on April 25th, 2023 · Uncategorized

By Hal Pawson

The Albanese Government’s flagship housing legislation has stalled in the Senate, with the PM alarmingly flagging a risk that the package might be abandoned until the next election.

To understand what’s going on here we need to wind the clock back to the ALP’s platform taken to the 2022 election. Let’s remember that, when it comes to social and affordable housing, the backdrop to that contest was a decade of federal inaction. Granted, the action of then Treasurer Scott Morrison in setting up the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) to provide ‘cheaper debt finance’ for low-cost housing providers had been a positive move. But there was no serious government money behind this, nor any real ambition.

In 2022 Federal Labor, still reeling from its 2019 election defeat, had walked away from the modest landlord tax reform proposals Bill Shorten had taken to that contest. Albanese’s 2022 housing platform was, nevertheless, a reasonably broad ranging bundle.

The centrepiece was the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), a plan for a $10 billion equity investment, with estimated annual returns of $500 million to be channelled into social and affordable housing construction subsidy. By this means, it was promised, the Albanese Government would build 30,000 social and affordable homes in five years – a pledge later expanded to 40,000 under the Treasurer’s National Housing Accord unveiled at the October budget.

This breaks down as 20,000 social housing dwellings, homes targeted at social security recipients and other very low income earners; plus 20,000 affordable rental homes – more modestly discounted tenancies aimed at low income workers.

Although there’s little published detail on how this might work, it’s understood that the HAFF was modelled on the NSW Government’s $1 billion Social and Affordable Housing Fund. Set up in 2016, this saw 3,500 social and affordable homes being built or acquired by community housing organisations (CHOs). Government enabled this by contracting with CHOs to pay them an annual subsidy over 25 years to bridge the gap between their rental income and their management, maintenance and finance costs over this period.

The HAFF hits trouble

The HAFF legislation has hit trouble in the Senate for several reasons. With the Coalition rejecting the bill in keeping with Peter Dutton’s general default stance, crossbench critics have leveraged their ‘casting vote’ position by pushing for more ambitious and ‘more reliable’ commitments. This has brought together the Greens, the Jackie Lambie Network and Senator David Pocock.

Their main complaint is that the HAFF financial commitment is inadequate. There are two aspects to this. The first – probably shared by the government – is that the Fund’s expected annual yield may be no longer sufficient to underwrite the promised investment program. Soaring construction cost inflation over the past year has raised serious doubts on whether the pledged program remains deliverable without a significant funding top-up over and above the $10 billion commitment.

A second, and more strongly voiced criticism is that – even at the promised size – the construction program itself remains far too small to make any serious dent in the scale of social and affordable housing need. Considering that there are over 160,000 very low income households on waiting lists across Australia, and over 400,000 currently experiencing unmet need for social housing, this criticism is well-founded. On this basis, the Greens are advocating for annual investment of $5 billion – ten times the pledged amount.

At the same time, of course, 40,000 new social and affordable homes enabled through federal funding over coming years would be 40,000 more than Australia has seen over the past decade, so there’s also a need to recognise that – even on its currently proposed scale – this is a significant commitment.

The critics might be more willing to adopt this ‘glass half full’ perspective if there was an explicit assurance from Housing Minister Julie Collins that the current HAFF proposal must represent only a first step towards a more ambitious longer-term program. A program that, it would be hoped, would be underpinned by the government’s forthcoming National Housing and Homelessness Plan.

Reliability concerns

A third objection to the HAFF voiced by the Greens is that the Future Fund model is in any case too risky, since investment returns will naturally vary from one year to the next. It seems that the model’s appeal to officialdom is that, being backed by income, funds generated in this way can be logged as ‘off balance sheet’ expenditure that is more palatable for the government accounts.

In practice, it’s hard to see how government could avoid at least implicitly guaranteeing future expenditure on HAFF projects irrespective of variable Fund returns, having signed long-term subsidy contracts with housing providers (or possibly with super funds pledging low-rate lending). With this in mind, it is also difficult to understand why the Minister avoids the explicit assurance that could at least help to calm this aspect of the debate.

With Minister Collins having failed to satisfy her Senate critics, the HAFF debate has now been paused until Parliamentary sittings resume next month. In the meantime, it will be hoped that the Budget will provide an opportunity for an official pledge to top up investment commitments to assuage the government’s progressive critics.

The bigger picture

Beyond all this, it’s important to emphasise that the HAFF is only one element of Labor’s housing policy package. Complementary reforms in the governance of housing policy show welcome recognition that beefing up social and affordable housing investment is far from a cure-all for Australia’s housing affordability challenge.

Alongside the National Housing and Homelessness Plan, the re-establishment of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, and the creation of Housing Australia as a national housing agency help to fashion conditions for more significant progress.

But if such is to be achieved, a far wider set of reforms will be needed. Within this, Albanese will have to face up to revisiting the Shorten manifesto’s landlord tax reform plans. Perhaps, in the light of dawning recognition that Australia’s tax system needs to focus more on wealth and less on income, that will even chime with evolving official thinking.

This post was first published on John Menadue’s Pearls and Irritations site. Read the original version here.

The post-COVID crisis hit Queensland hardest. With 100,000 households needing low-cost housing, here’s how it can recover

Posted by on April 6th, 2023 · Housing

By Hal Pawson. A version of this story was first published in The Conversation. Read the original article here.

While the COVID emergency has waned over the past year, pandemic-generated pressures have left our rental housing market reeling. Australia-wide, vacancy rates remain close to rock bottom levels, while rental prices have been soared at record rates. Since the onset of the pandemic house rents have soared by 23% at the national level, but by a punishing (for tenants) 34% in Brisbane.

With recent homelessness increases likewise outpacing all other states or territories, it has been Queensland’s misfortune to find itself at the epicentre of the post-COVID housing storm. Little wonder, then, that Premier Palaszczuk decided to convene an extraordinary housing summit in October 2022.

Equally, although partly primed by the pandemic, many current housing policy challenges for both Queensland and the nation as a whole, have been building for decades. Perhaps the most important of these have been the ongoing decline of home ownership rates, especially among younger adults, and the increasingly inadequate capacity of the social housing system.

Recent policy initiatives fall far short

None of this is to say that Queensland’s current situation reflects a simple case of blameworthy state government inaction in the immediate past. As recognised in our recent report for Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS), for example, significant rental reforms have been progressed during the current term of government.

Moreover, as part of the state’s 2021 post-pandemic economic recovery package, the Queensland Treasurer pledged substantial new state-funded social housing investment, building on commitments already in place prior to the public health crisis.

Then, at the October 2022 housing summit, came the Premier’s commitment to double the Government’s housing future fund, a move compounding Queensland’s pledged support for new social and affordable housing construction over coming years. And beyond that, following the 2022 change of government in Canberra, there is also now a prospect of renewed Commonwealth investment in social and affordable housing, some of which will flow to Queensland.

Nevertheless, such initiatives follow a decade of generally intensifying housing stress, and insufficient attention to this policy challenge – at both state and Commonwealth levels. For example, annual social housing construction in Queensland averaged only around 500 during the ten years to 2020. Thus, while the state’s population grew by 17% in the decade to 2021, social housing stock expanded by just 2% – an effective cut in capacity.

So, while recently promised Queensland and Commonwealth social housing investment signals a welcome supply boost in coming years, there is a vast amount of ground to make up.

The scale of this challenge is graphically illustrated by our new research finding that the state’s unmet need for social housing exceeds 100,000 households – a total far in excess of official waiting list numbers. By our calculations, even to prevent the further intensification of current shortage will call for an annual output of between 1,500 and 2,700 new units – around double the number expected to be built over the next ten years under existing Queensland Government financial commitments.

An action plan: the key components

As argued in our report, the intricacy and deep-rootedness of Australia’s housing problems demands radical and sustained action by both levels of government. In some cases, necessary measures are mainly a matter of building on recent or ongoing Queensland Government initiatives – such as by further expanding the Queensland housing future fund to ramp up social housing investment, or by extending rental regulation reform to provide greater tenant security.

Some other recommended reforms partially echo proposals by construction and real estate industry bodies, such as encouraging purpose built rental housing development to expand overall housing supply and expand choice for consumers. Similarly, as overwhelmingly backed by mainstream economists, the Queensland Government should emulate the ACT in replacing stamp duty with a broad-based land tax. This will remove a barrier to house-moves and encourage more efficient use of existing housing stock.

Once again in line with most of Australia’s top economists, we urge the phase-out of private landlord tax concessions, a measure that could effectively enable a re-targeting of government support towards investment in meeting housing need, as well as helping to enable a gradual recovery in young adult home ownership rates.

Importantly, many desirable measures could be implemented to the benefit of the housing system but at little or no cost to government. For example, Queensland could enable stepped-up investment by not-for-profit community housing providers through conferring full ownership of CHP-managed properties originally built by government.

Another near-costless measure would be to mandate affordable housing contributions by private developers, as routinely operated in the City of Sydney, as well as – at scale – in countries such as the UK and USA. Contrary to the way that this is sometimes portrayed, the cost of such contributions is in fact borne by landowners, not by housebuilders or consumers.

Crucially, in tackling a policy challenge of this complexity governments must recognise that one-off cherry-picked initiatives are liable to be ineffective or even counter-productive. Instead, if they are serious about tackling the problem they must commit to concerted and coherent reforms within a meaningful overarching strategy.

We can only hope that the Commonwealth Government’s promised National Housing and Homelessness Plan – the first-ever initiative of its kind – opens up a pathway to rebalancing our housing system. Mobilising all of the many tools at its disposal, Queensland must act in concert.

The housing and homelessness crisis in NSW explained in 9 charts

Posted by on March 20th, 2023 · Uncategorized

By Hal Pawson, UNSW Sydney. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Whatever the result of the New South Wales election on March 25, rising housing stress is a problem the new state government will have to confront.

Soaring rents and an extraordinary lack of rental vacancies are intensifying housing stress in Sydney and elsewhere. Many low-income households are spending well over 30% of their income on housing costs.

The numbers of people seeking help are pushing social housing and homelessness systems to the brink.

But how did these sectors end up in such a vulnerable place? And why are some of their problems worse than in other states?

Population has outpaced social housing supply

The stock of social housing in Australia has hardly changed in 25 years. It has fallen further and further behind the supply needed to keep pace with population growth.

Social housing accounted for more than 6% of occupied dwellings in 1996. By 2021, it was barely above 4%. Rather than reflecting active policy – such as large-scale privatisation or demolition – this is mainly a case of simple neglect.

At first sight, NSW did relatively well during the 2010s. Social housing stock apparently rose by 9% compared with 12% for population.

Unfortunately, this is a somewhat misleading impression. It reflects the NSW government’s 2016 decision to widen its definition of social housing to include less-subsidised affordable rental housing managed by community housing providers. While this housing meets an important need for low-paid “essential workers”, it is no substitute for housing that very low-income earners can afford.

If not for this redefinition, the NSW chart would more closely resemble the national post-1996 picture.

Social housing supply

Social housing construction numbers aren’t directly published in any official series but can be estimated from Australian Bureau of Statistics data on housing commencements. The 2010s began with a dramatic spike as the federal Rudd government invested in social housing as part of its emergency response to the Global Financial Crisis.

But then national and state governments largely stepped back from new social housing investment. NSW annual commencements ran at only 500-1,000 for most of the 2010s. This is less than half the minimum number needed to maintain social housing’s share of all housing.

Unlike other states such as Victoria and Queensland, the NSW government resisted calls for state-funded social housing investment as part of pandemic recovery plans in 2020 and 2021. In contrast with those states, NSW expects to achieve only a minimal net increase in social housing in the first half of the 2020s.

Not only is expected construction modest in scale, it is mainly associated with large-scale demolition of “obsolete” public housing to liberate land. Some is then sold to generate investment funds.

Unlike Victoria, the NSW government has continued to insist new social housing cannot be funded from general government revenue.

The trends are even more problematic than stock numbers suggest, because the system’s capacity to generate lettable vacancies continues to decline. Very few newly built properties are coming up for let. And the flow of existing tenancies being ended has dwindled as tenants struggle to find alternatives in the private rental market.

Social housing lettings in 2021-22 were down 13% compared with 2014-15. And a growing share of scarce lettings has to be devoted to priority applicants – those with the most urgent and severe needs. Priority lets grew by 37% over the past four years and made up nearly two-thirds of all lettings (64%) by 2021-22.

Vacancies remaining for non-priority applicants have almost halved since 2014-15 – down 47%.

Homelessness

Many of those assigned priority status are homeless or at imminent risk of becoming homeless. The latest official statistics that directly measure homelessness are from the 2016 census when 38,000 people were homeless in NSW. Relative to population, homelessness was higher than in any other mainland state.

Measured by the average monthly caseload of specialist homelessness services agencies, homelessness has more recently been rising relatively slowly in NSW. It was up 5% in the four years to 2021-22 compared with 8% nationally.

But rising numbers are being turned away – nearly 10,000 people in 2021-22 – up by 22% in three years. This suggests the system is increasingly overloaded.

The wider point is that homelessness is rising while social housing capacity is shrinking.

After several years of stability or slight reductions, the social housing waiting list (excluding existing tenants) grew by 15% in 2021-22 to 52,000 households. But annual snapshot statistics mask large numbers joining and leaving the list each year.

By our calculations, 17,000 households newly enrolled on the NSW social housing register in 2020-21, nearly double the number given a tenancy. That’s another powerful measure of shortage.

Note that the rules on waiting list eligibility are strict. The weekly household income limit in 2022 was $690 – well below the full-time minimum wage of $812.60.

Far greater numbers of people are homeless or living with rental stress than are on the list. Many people who could qualify realise their chances are so slim it isn’t worth the trouble. Others drop off when they realise they face a wait of years or even decades.

Our recent census-based analysis shows there were well over 200,000 NSW households with an unmet need for social or affordable housing in 2021. Some 144,000 of them would probably qualify for social housing.

True, some of these needs could be met in other ways, such as a major increase in rent assistance. But even if that happened and if no-grounds evictions were outlawed in NSW, private tenancies will remain far less secure than social housing. Arguably, that makes them fundamentally unsuitable for vulnerable people and low-income families.

What lies ahead?

The extraordinary rent spike of 2021-2022 has been the main cause of rising housing need. This happened while immigration all but stopped during the pandemic.

With migration rebounding, there is a serious worry rent inflation will continue to rage, placing even more low-income Australians in financial stress.

Somewhere on the horizon is modest help via the Albanese government’s Housing Australia Future Fund. The target is 30,000 new social and affordable dwellings over five years, with NSW likely to get a large share.

However, the HAFF legislation remains under review. Even when new homes begin to flow through, numbers will be quite small relative to need.

In NSW, party leaders are touting rival plans to assist first home buyers, but have long neglected arguably more serious policy challenges at the lower end of the housing market. Hundreds of thousands of households are struggling as a result.