Building Australia's affordable housing industry: capacity challenges and capacity-enhancing strategies

ABSTRACT

As in many other nations, Australia's intensifying shortage of affordable housing represents one of the most pressing policy challenges for government. Against a backdrop of ongoing population growth, the 20-year virtual moratorium on public housing construction means that, by 2016, the gross social housing provision deficit had reached 140,000 dwellings. And, while largely frozen in scale, the country's public housing system has also become increasingly residualised and rundown. In tackling these twin problems, some policy-makers and advocates have invested hopes in an emerging non-government affordable housing industry, largely configured around not-for-profit community housing providers. For some government players, however, the sector's nascent status and therefore ‘restricted capacity’ has been judged a crucial limitation on the extent to which it can be reasonably delegated responsibility for easing national housing stress. Applying a system-minded conception of the ‘affordable housing industry’ and adopting a multidimensional ‘capacity’ framework, this research investigated the factors limiting the scope for the industry's further expansion. In highlighting industry capacity restrictions stemming from the hollowing-out of government and its institutions, our findings connect with a wider policy studies literature and will have resonance in many countries beyond Australia – particularly in the Anglophone world.

KEYWORDS:

• Social housing
• third sector
• housing policy
• capacity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. These figures relate to ‘mainstream’ CHPs and therefore exclude the distinct portfolio managed by Indigenous-specific community housing organisations.

2. The Commonwealth of Australia is a federation of six states and two territories. The Australian Government (sometimes ‘the Commonwealth’) has no formal constitutional role or powers on housing although certain administrations have chosen to take a significant interest in the topic. The Commonwealth is in any case pre-eminent in taxation and macroeconomic policy, and its ‘housing assistance’ grants are the largest source of state/territory housing funds. Each of these has its own PHA and laws on residential tenancies and planning.

3. These otherwise unpublished figures collated from CHP annual reports.

4. Across Australia's eight capital cities, housing rents rose by 17% in real terms in the 20 years to 2017 (ABS Cat 6401, Table 9). The equivalent figure for Sydney was 25%. However, since the relevant Australian Bureau of Statistics rent series includes public housing rents, it likely understates the true increase in private market rents over this period.

5. It should be noted that for this research the capacity of PHAs as provider entities was excluded from consideration on the grounds that – although they form part of current provision, their growth potential is non-existent under current policy settings. Therefore, growing the affordable housing industry is fundamentally concerned with expanding the non-government sector.

6. Specifically, on the organisations registered as ‘Tier 1’ and ‘Tier 2’ entities under the National Regulatory Scheme for Community Housing – NRSCH. ‘Tier’ status is determined by the relevant state/territory-based community housing registrar office, bearing in mind the published guidelines (National Regulatory Scheme for Community Housing, 2014). The governing criteria are the scale of an organisation's housing management responsibilities and its involvement in social/affordable housing development.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AU) [grant number PR71080].