Where does the Albanese Government’s new National Housing Accord take us?
Tuesday’s budget revealed the Government had struck an agreement with state and territory Governments – a National Housing Accord – to boost housing supply and create more affordable and social housing. The target is one million new ‘well located’ homes over five years from 2024. It’s a plan the Property Council has welcomed and committed to working collaboratively with Government on.
The substantive commitments within the Accord are welcome but limited. A review of build-to-rent housing and an extra 20,000 affordable housing dwellings. The housing supply actions are general and unspecific.
Of itself, the Housing Accord announced on Tuesday does not amount to fundamental reform. But its potential importance emerges once we put this together with the new housing policy architecture the Government has flagged.
A new National Housing Supply and Affordability Council will be stood up from 1 January, initially on an interim basis and later backed by legislation. The Government’s current National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) will become Housing Australia with broader powers and a $10 billion Housing Future Fund to administer (among other schemes). The policy settings relating to institutional investment into housing will be reviewed in time for the May budget.
And the Government wants to create a new National Housing and Homelessness Plan by 2024, underpinned by a new intergovernmental funding agreement – a task the Productivity Commission has just recommended a bold new blueprint for.
Of course, there’s plenty of room for this new architecture to fail to deliver real change. But maybe it can.
