A housing affordability alliance of peak industry groups, including the Property Council of Australia, has released a paper with a suite of new policy measures to address the country’s housing crisis.
The unique alliance, which includes the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Community Housing Industry Association, Industry Super Australia, Homelessness Australia, the Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia, National Shelter and the Property Council of Australia claims that if implemented, the policy options could deliver almost 15,000 new social and affordable homes a year, on top of new supply already in the pipeline.
The proposal includes introducing tax offsets and incentives for investing in social and affordable housing, setting up a $20 billion Future Fund, ramping up build-to-rent, strengthening laws to divert developer contributions towards social and affordable housing as well as developing a database to tracks demand and delivery of housing to identify areas of greatest need.
National Affordable Housing Alliance (NAHA) Chair Mr Rod Fehring said the policies aim to leverage new sources of private sector capital and Australia’s residential development capabilities, which are among the most efficient housing delivery mechanisms in the world.
“Despite significant efforts by governments, as well as community, and the private sector over the past thirty-plus years, Australia’s social and affordable housing and homelessness crisis has continued to worsen,” Mr Fehring said.
In its paper, NAHA outlined in its four key priorities as follows:
- Implementing a Housing Capital Aggregator supported by refundable Affordable Housing Tax Offsets to incentivise and crowd in institutional investment in new social and affordable housing supply.
- Establishing a Social and Affordable Housing Future Fund with an initial $20 billion in funds under management to close the social and affordable housing funding gap.
- Activating Affordable Build-to-Rent housing as a vehicle to deliver additional social and affordable housing.
- Enhancing state and territory-based planning and development contributions legislation to prioritise up to 1% of infrastructure contributions and levies to be aggregated and channelled into social and affordable housing provision consistent with state and territory housing policies across Australia.
Mr Fehring said a recent independent review for the Australian Government found that ‘an investment of around $290 billion will be required over the next two decades to meet the shortfall in social and affordable housing dwellings.’
“Significantly improving people’s access to housing that is safe, secure and affordable for the occupants has to be put high on the policy agenda for 2022 and beyond,” Mr Fehring said.
“The longer the challenge goes without solutions that match the scale of the problem, the more acute it will become with profound social and economic implications,” Mr Fehring said.
“We must urgently adopt new approaches backed by new alliances, supporters and sources of capital, to not only halt but gradually reverse this decline and substantially increase the supply of social and affordable housing in an enduring, systematic and self-sustaining way.”
In developing the suite of policy options, NAHA has drawn on the collective expertise of its members together with a range of experts in the field.
In parallel with the four recommendations, NAHA is also seeking a commitment to the development of an integrated database that would track the delivery of social and affordable housing delivery at a national and regional level to ensure that capital Is deployed where need is greatest.
“A long-term dataset is critical in ensuring that both transparency and accountability in the delivery of the right types of housing on the right terms in the right locations,” Mr Fehring said.
The Alliance is seeking to work with all levels of government and has proposed establishing a joint federal, state and territory government taskforce in partnership with NAHA to progress the development and implementation of the recommended policy suite.
A copy of NAHA’s paper Increasing the Supply of Social and Affordable Housing at Scale and in Perpetuity: Policy Options can be found here.