The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s (AIHW) 2018 National Social Housing Survey (NSHS) has been distributed to a randomly selected group of community housing tenants and members are encouraged, through their communications, to impress upon them the importance of participating.
Whilst organisations won’t know if any of their tenants have been selected for the survey, the AIHW has asked that they still ensure tenants know the surveys are legitimate and important: the data collected helps inform service improvements to social housing programs and is used for national reporting purposes.
Selected tenants will have received a pre-approval letter that advises them to expect the survey. A follow up letter includes the survey, which they can complete online.
The AIHW has also requested that community housing organisations refrain from running their own surveys between mid-April and June to avoid confusing tenants.
The 2018 NSHS will collect information from a sample of tenants in social housing, including community housing tenants, from all states and territories. Community housing tenants who are selected to participate in the 2018 NSHS will receive the survey by mail. Information collected from community housing tenants will include:
tenants’ satisfaction with current housing and housing – related services
tenants’ housing histories
tenants’ need for, and ability to access, other community and health services, and
demographic data about the tenant and their household.
The NSHS will also include tenants in Public Housing, State Owned and Managed Indigenous Housing and, for the first time in 2018, will include tenants in Indigenous Community Housing in Queensland.
Some of this year’s survey results will be included in the Productivity Commission’s annual Report on Government Services in January 2019, with the rest to be released in March/April 2019.
Compass Housing Services and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage’s Sustainability Advantage Program have partnered to bring you The New Urban Agenda: Partnering for a resilient, inclusive, sustainable NSW Forum.
The battle for sustainability will be won or lost in cities. To achieve a prosperous, productive and sustainable NSW, growing issues around inclusion, liveability and resilience must be tackled head-on. Finding scalable solutions to these challenges is at the heart of Agenda 2030 (the Sustainable Development Goals) and the New Urban Agenda—and a key focus of NSW Government priorities and local council strategies. But government can’t do it alone: to get where we need to be by 2030 requires new levels of ambition, collaboration and innovation.
Compass Housing Services and the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage have partnered to bring you The New Urban Agenda: Partnering for a resilient, inclusive, sustainable NSW, an interactive, multi-stakeholder forum that will unpick three of NSW’s most pressing problems:
providing better, more inclusive access to housing and basic services
creating clean, resource-efficient and liveable communities
building resilient, low-carbon urban economies
The forum will be held on Friday, May 4, from 9am to 5pm.
A warning to members and stakeholders that someone impersonating a CHIA employee has been emailing organisations in the housing space and asking them to get in touch to share some documents.
If you receive an email from Stephen Ronald, who is purporting to be CHIA’s Manager Policy and Standards, please do not engage and definitely do not open any attachments. This person is in no way associated with CHIA and never has been.
Genuine emails from CHIA will include the domain @communityhousing.com.au rather than being from a generic gmail or other email account.
Please share this warning with your staff and networks.
Port Phillip Housing Association (PPHA) will team up with the Whitehorse City Council and property developer MAB Corporation (MAB) to deliver 73 brand new architect-designed, affordable homes for low income residents, particularly older people and those living with a disability.
The $25 million affordable housing project in Bruce Street, Box Hill will further expand PPHA’s social housing capacity in the inner-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, at a time when rental properties for low income residents, are critically low.
Whitehorse City Council is one of the first local authorities in Melbourne’s east to take the lead in increasing affordable housing.
PPHA Chairman Frank O’Connor said: ‘This project proves just what can be achieved when private enterprise, local government, great design and innovative community housing come together with a sincere, common purpose.
‘A critical solution to the housing affordability crisis being felt right across our communities, is to fundamentally increase the number of affordable, quality homes available to rent.
‘There are simply not enough affordable homes to fill the need, where that need is located,’ Mr. O’Connor said.
‘Building contemporary, beautiful, good quality homes where people can live safely, with dignity and at an affordable price brings relief not just to them, but to the whole community.’
Whitehorse Mayor, Cr Andrew Davenport said this new development will provide 73 well designed apartments for local residents who will pay rent only within their means.
‘In Whitehorse, only 1.6 per cent of all rental vacancies in 2016 were classified as affordable,’ Cr Davenport said.
‘With Port Phillip Housing Association and MAB Corporation involved in the project, Box Hill locals can be assured that the development will be attractive and will integrate beautifully into the character and amenity of the local area.’
This will be the second affordable housing collaboration between PPHA, HAYBALL architects and MAB Corporation, a leading, diversified Melbourne-based development group. The same team was behind the Moorabbin Affordable Housing development completed in 2011 with a project value of $23 million. Located in South Road Moorabbin, the project delivered seven storeys and 75 apartments at completion.
built to the Victorian Government’s Better Apartment Design standards,
a mix of studio, 1 and 2-bedroom and dual key dwellings,
will include apartments specially designed for those living with a disability, with
40 apartments suitable for older residents.
The site will also include a social enterprise café as well as commercial and retail opportunities, to create a supportive vibrant neighbourhood for residents.
PPHA Chief Executive Haleh Homaei said building resilient and sustainable neighbourhoods to support good quality housing is the key to long term, stable, affordable housing tenancies and ensuring return on investment.
This expertise, plus our 30+ years’ experience in tenancy management are the unique elements that we, as a robust, regulated community housing agency, bring to this table and to all our collaborative partnerships.
‘We are thrilled to be working on our next exciting project with Whitehorse City Council, MAB and Hayball. This project will deliver $25 million high quality – affordable housing to Box Hill.’
CHIA Board member and City West Housing CEO Leonie King brings a unique perspective to her community housing role.
Leonie spent a number of years working in housing as a senior NSW Government executive. She bowed out of the bureaucracy in 2016 as an Executive Director in the Department of Family and Community Services, her most recent roles including responsibility for community housing and specialist disability accommodation.
‘I had developed a passion for the community housing sector,’ Leonie says, ‘And I thought the obvious thing to do was to go into in the sector that I had been involved in growing and supporting for a considerable period of time.
‘What has always appealed to me about housing, and about social and affordable housing in particular, is that tension between the commercial imperative and social objectives and how you use use both levers to make lives better for people. That makes it a very interesting area to work in because you are always having to make judgement calls and trade offs.’
Leonie is optimistic about community housing’s potential to develop and grow over the next few years.
‘There had been a bit of a drought nationally in recent years in terms of government focus and attention on the community housing sector, but now there are so many different parts of government that all see the community housing sector’s usefulness in terms of their ability to deliver on the government’s policy agenda.’
Not that the attention is without its difficulties, as different government agencies and tiers of Government have different contractual obligations and different risk profiles, adding to the administrative complexity and costs of managing multiple similar, but slightly different, programs and contracts.
‘It would be really nice to see a bit more consistency; if they contracted in a similar way, if the standard terms and the standard risk profile for like programs was similar that just makes the decision making process so much easier.’
City West has been a major beneficiary of the only planning scheme in Australia (in the City of Sydney) that sees developer contributions levied on developments and passed through directly to a community housing organisation.
‘We have received quite significant contributions under that model which is invested in new affordable housing.’
Leonie says it is unfortunate that many local governments who receive affordable housing in exchange for density bonuses to developers are hesitant to consider a role for community housing beyond property and tenancy management.
‘The standard model is that the councils receive those affordable housing units at the end of the project, maintain ownership and outsource the management; I think there is a potential missed opportunity in either transferring ownership to community housing providers or thinking about forming a joint venture or partnership arrangement with community housing at the front end of that process.
‘The strength of the City of Sydney model is that they saw that owning and managing community housing was not their core business or their core strength,’ Leonie says.
While City West Housing has not participated in the NSW Government’s transfer of more than 6,000 public housing properties to community housing providers in recent years Leonie, unsurprisingly, is a major fan of this initiative.
‘I passionately believe that the first major tranche of property transfers in NSW, which also saw a transfer of ownership, was the trigger that was needed at that time in NSW to build the balance sheet capacity for the sector so it could then borrow and deliver more affordable housing.’
NSW now has a number of large community housing providers, holding significant assets, undertaking development and operating at scale which is a direct result of those title transfers, she says.
‘If you want to grow through borrowing you can’t do that without a balance sheet.’
A number of those providers now stand to benefit from the NSW Government’s commitment to transfer the management of a further 14,000 public housing properties.
Looking to the future, Leonie would like to see more public housing transferred to the community housing sector.
‘I strongly believe in having a diversified delivery system to provide more choice and to create innovation. I think that is really hard to create when, as is the case in NSW, you still have a 130,000 property portfolio managed by one provider. So I would like to see change of at least management, if not ownership.
‘The more this sector grows, the more housing outcomes we can deliver for people…so I hope governments continue that trajectory.’
The Victorian Property Fund has financed a new housing development to be managed by Women’s Housing Ltd in Newport, Melbourne, that has been designed specifically for women and children escaping family violence.
The project replaced seven existing housing units with nine one-bedroom units and 11 two-bedroom units.
Women’s Housing is a community housing provider with a focus on housing older women and survivors of family violence.
AHURI has released a new report , Understanding opportunities for social impact investment in the development of affordable housing.
The report examines the opportunities for, barriers to, and risks to social impact investment (SII) for social and affordable housing in Australia.
SIIs aim to achieve a specific beneficial social objective together with a financial return, and measure the achievement of both.
The researchers looked at US and UK models and interviewed government experts, social impact investors and not-for-profit housing providers, to inform the analysis.
The Sydney Western City Planning Panel has approved an application by BaptistCare Community Housing’s to undertake a $39 million development for seniors in Narellan, a region that is lacking in affordable housing.
The panel has approved the two stage development that will see the construction of an initial 84 senior housing dwellings and 38 affordable rentals (group homes) followed by a 129 room/134 bed residential aged care facility and 46 retirement villas.
The NSW Aboriginal Housing Office has partnered with the NSW Federation of Housing Associations (NSWFHA) to support the development of a new peak body to represent that state’s Aboriginal community housing sector.
The new body is to be called the Aboriginal Community Housing Industry Association NSW– or ACHIA NSW – to promote a close working relationship with the mainstream peak bodies; the national Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) and state NSWFHA (which plans to change its name to CHIA NSW in 2018).
Since being established in December, ACHIA’s interim committee has been developing its terms of reference, a work plan and strategic priorities to take back to the sector for consultation.
NSWFHA has also been working hard to raise the profile of the new peak with stakeholders, including all levels of government, so that Aboriginal housing is not just seen as a specialist area dealt with by specialist agencies.
The interim committee will consult with the sector on the governance structure for ACHIA, including elections and the selection criteria for Board members.
Economist Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ is looking a bit arthritic when it comes to the housing market, according to Professor Duncan McLennan.
At a seminar in Sydney this week, Professor McLennan proposed a strong set of economic arguments for government investment in housing to support the traditional arguments of affordable housing as a merit good which makes a critical social contribution.
Professor McLennan observed that, across the western world, governments had stepped back from investing in affordable housing in the 1980s, following the idea that the market should prevail. It is now abundantly clear that Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand of the market would see the self-interested actions of individuals frequently benefiting society more than if actions that were intended to benefit society is not ensuring good outcomes for those on low incomes.
The broader housing market is made up of a mosaic of housing sub-markets that interact in complex ways with the wider economy. In cities like Sydney, the housing market has become so overinflated compared to the wider housing market that government cannot manage it using the usual monetary policy solutions without disrupting the wider economy.
It is surprising how little analysis there has been in Australia of the impact of housing on the economy, he said. Yet housing represents 20 to 25 per cent of the household budget; it is the most significant asset and major debt of households.
When households spend more and more of their income on housing costs, they divert spending away from consumption of other goods and services and they save less. Productivity is lowered by the long commutes of key workers, congestion in our cities, and the mismatch of jobs and housing.
There is a strong intergenerational impact as well he said. Children’s educational outcomes are impacted by poor housing and concentration of low income households in more affordable areas, away from job opportunities, compromises the school to work transitions of young people. A new narrative is needed, he argued, which deals with housing as part of a country’s essential infrastructure, not as separate or in opposition to investment in transport or energy, for example.
McLennan’s presentation was followed by a panel discussion involving Jennifer Westacott, CEO of the Business Council of Australia, Emeritus Professor Judith Yates, and Dr Marcus Spiller of SGS Economics.
Ms Westacott flagged that the Business Council of Australia is keen to work with the sector on housing policy. She identified that one of the reasons for our housing problem was the failure of planning systems to take a long-term, integrated view of transport housing and other infrastructure.
We need to encourage large scale private sector investment into affordable housing and reform the taxes and charges that distort the housing market. Westacott said it was time to look again at how housing subsidies were delivered into social housing, observing that the situation now might be very different if the Howard government’s 1996 proposals had succeeded (to replace the Commonwealth-state housing agreement funding to the states with rent assistance).
Innovation in the monolithic public housing system was nigh impossible, Ms Westacott said.
Judith Yates urged the audience not to abandon the social justice narrative in the pursuit of stronger economic arguments for government investment in housing. There is plenty of evidence that growing inequality itself lowers a country’s productivity, she said, but we should not just be concerned about inequality because of its impact on productivity.
Yates asked if we succeed in changing the housing system to increase productivity, how will the benefits of that increase be shared across the community? Looking towards Australia in 2117, she challenged the audience to think more creatively about the housing challenge – should we be building more cities for instance?
Marcus Spiller of SGS Economics challenged the audience to consider why governments had become so deaf to the economic arguments for intervening in the housing market. Since neither the Federal nor state governments appear able to deal with Australia’s housing challenge, he proposed that a better way to transact housing policies would be to devolve authority for matters such as planning and taxes to the regional level. Regional, he hastened to add, means metro-wide planning approaches. Spiller also asked the question of who owns the development rights to land – while ownership of the land is clear, surely the development rights belong to all of us.
In a submission to the Treasury’s Review of the Australian Charities and Not For Profit Commission (ACNC), the Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) has rejected a proposed expansion of the ACNC’s remit.
The ACNC had recommended that its Act be amended to include promoting the effective use of resources of not-for-profits and accountability to donors, beneficiaries and the public.
CHIA Executive Director, Peta Winzar, says the recommendation is misguided.
‘First and foremost, the Board of a not-for-profit organisation is responsible for ensuring its resources are used effectively,’ Ms Winzar says.
‘Second, in the community housing sector the state-based regulators which operate under the National Regulatory Scheme for Community Housing, and its counterparts in Victoria and Western Australia, periodically review the effectiveness of both for profit and not-for-profit registered community housing organisations.
‘Third, the he National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH) publishes sector-wide data on the effectiveness of the registered sector. Sector-wide information about tenant and housing outcomes of community housing organisations is also published by the Productivity Commission in its annual Report on Government Services.
‘So we see no value in the ACNC shadowing the functions of a Board, or duplicating the existing arrangements for regulating and reporting on community housing organisations,’ Ms Winzar says.
However, CHIA did support the ACNC’s proposal to include a statutory definition of a ‘not-for-profit organisation’ to clarify how assets will be handled in the event of an organisation winding up.
‘CHIA would also welcome further work by the ACNC and the Australian Accounting Standards Board to improve the reporting framework for registered charities,’ Ms Winzar says.
‘We would, of course, expect that changes to the reporting framework will advance the existing objective of the Act to reduce unnecessary regulatory obligations on the Australian not-for-profit sector.’
CHIA Vic’s has released early bird tickets for the Brave New World of Community Housing conference, to be held on Thursday, April 19.
Keynote speaker, Derek Ballantyne, is the new Chair of the organisation tasked with the implementation of Canada’s new National Housing Strategy.
Derek will provide insights into the development of the strategy, and expected outcomes.is a vital educational and networking event that provides our members and key stakeholders access to the industry’s latest developments, policy and best practice via inspirational speakers.
New accounting changes are going to impact the community housing sector from January. Is your organisation ready? CHIA talks to ACNC’s Melville Yates about the changes.
Transcript:
CHIA: Community housing providers will be impacted by changes made by the Australian Accounting Standards Board but also the way that they need to account for things like the use of volunteers and peppercorn rent.
Charities must adopt the changes for the annual reporting periods commencing on or after the 1st of January 2019 but can choose to use them earlier if they wish.
To answer any queries the industry may have about ensuring they comply with the new standards, the Community Housing Industry Association has invited Mel Yates, the Director of Reporting and Red Tape Reduction at the Australian Charities and Not-For-Profits Commission to host today’s webinar.
Mel, thanks for your time. Perhaps we could start by summarizing the significance of these changes for the community housing sector.
MY: So essentially there are it can be summarized into three key areas, so one of those key areas relates to peppercorn leases, so traditionally peppercorn leases haven’t necessarily been recorded in financial statements – they need to be under these new standards and really that is designed to capture the value of the right to use a particular asset by a charitable organisation and where they are, if you like, where they’re getting a windfall for want of a better word. So really where they are getting something less than fair value then they need to record the difference as income or revenue, depending on what is appropriate for these circumstances and no one ever needed to do that in the past so …this is quite a significant change for the sector and, if you think about it, not just community housing but if you think about charities in general there are a lot of arrangements where a particular organisation might have the right to use a piece of land. For example, one of the common things is church arrangements or schools so quite often a school might be using a piece of land that belongs to the church and there’s a long-standing established relationship for the school to operate on that land but there might be a peppercorn lease in place where they’re paying, you know, a very small tokenistic amount for the right to use that land.
So those sorts of things now need to be recorded at fair value so it’s a very significant change for the sector.
The second major change is really around the some organizations and I’m assuming community housing is no different to the rest of the charity sector there are sometimes volunteers involved in the operation of charities so under the changes to these standards the volunteer effort can be recorded in the financial statements for the charity where it can be measured fairly and there are a number of other conditions and rules around that but essentially that’s one of the major changes.
So the third change, and this is probably one of the most major for the community housing sector, is where assets are transferred for less than fair value. So I would expect that in the community housing sector obviously housing is a significant asset with significant values. Depending on the providers and the arrangements that are put in place so that would also have a large impact on the sector.
CHIA: So this is obviously a very complex area we can’t cover off on all the questions that people would have today but what would you be saying to people who are responsible for accounts in community
housing organizations – what should they be doing right so right now?
So they really need to be turning their attention to these upcoming changes because unfortunately the time to act is right now. The time to start preparing is well and truly now because of the start date of these and that is 1 January 2019. Working backwards, the comparative financial year starts on 1 January 2018, so charities really need to be thinking about the assets that they have or that they use within their entities at the moment, and they need to start thinking about whether they are paying a fair value for the right to use those assets.
In terms of some of the practical things that we would recommend charities do, they really need to identify any different types of arrangements, so particularly any funding arrangements where there are specific performance obligations attached to those funding arrangements… and get their head around what those funding arrangements are and what they mean.
Also, in terms of reviewing any contracts, making sure that they understand the changes that come with these Accounting Standards; what they mean in practice and starting to think about how these transactions need to be recorded and how this is going to impact their operations.
Obviously peppercorn leases is, as you know, a very large part of this. So they really need to start thinking about any peppercorn leases which are in place. In discussions I’ve had with certain experts in this field, they are suggesting ,or they’ve mentioned that some of their clients are starting to renegotiate leases before they have to account for special leases under these standards because of the complexities involved.
So it’s not a good way to approach by sitting on your hands and not doing anything. Charities really need to be proactive in this space; seeking out guidance, seeking out advice and clarifying their understanding of what this means to them.
And I guess you know one of the most important things for the community housing sector is to engage in a conversation with your accountants and with your auditors….now about what these changes mean and where there are perhaps complexities.
Add to that the Australian Accounting Standards Board are aware of a number of technical issues that charities are starting to grapple with in relation to these changes and they are developing some specific guidance around some of these complex areas so the ACNC, while we are the charity regulator we don’t generally we’re not technical experts in interpreting the accounting standards. We often have dialogue with the Australian Accounting Standards Board to clarify things and make sure that our understanding is correct, but ultimately any questions about the standards themselves they should be going back to the Australian Accounting Standards Board to help feed into the guidance and some of the technical aspects that they were working on at this point in time.
There’s also a number of resources which are available on the AASB website in relation to these accounting standard changes so they’ve done a number of webinars and the like and they’ve also got some technical guidance products which are available for people to utilize and access to help with their understanding.
CHIA: Brilliant Mel, that’s really helpful. I’m sure lots of our members will be taking your advice on that thanks for your time today. We really appreciate it.
By 2020, the community housing industry will deliver 2700 homes across NSW.
That statistic is just one of the facts discovered and highlighted by the NSW Federation of Housing Association’s (NSWFHA) comprehensive report, Delivering New Housing Supply: NSW Community Housing Industry Snapshot 2017. The report is the first time the NSW community housing industry has reported on the significant contribution that registered community housing providers make to social and affordable housing supply.
The NSWFHA Snapshot is based on information provided by its members and highlights the sector’s expertise.
The snapshot found that, by 2020, registered community housing providers will have worked in partnership with NSW state and local governments and the private sector to:
create almost $1 billion in new housing investment for local communities
develop 2700 new properties, in addition to the 38,000 homes they currently own or manage
independently deliver eight out of 10 homes, without partnerships with for profit developers
develop new housing in 34 local government areas.
Providing more affordable rental housing is one of the major challenges for NSW and Australia and the community housing industry is uniquely placed to provide solutions. Registered community housing providers have a long-term commitment to the communities they work in and are able to develop quality, well-designed housing that meets local needs.
New Federal Government legislation which aims to prevent foreign donors from having undue influence in Australian politics will impact on charities including community housing organisations that spend $100,000 a year on political advocacy, CHIA’s Executive Director Peta Winzar has warned.
The Electoral Funding and Disclosure Reform Bill is designed to tighten laws on allowable donations to ‘registered political campaigners’ and to political entities (parties, candidates, and organisations associated with a party). Organisations, including charities, will have to register as ‘political campaigners’ if they spend more than $100,000 a year on political purposes.
‘They will also need to supply details of directors and senior staff, including their membership of registered political parties. Civil penalties can apply to someone who incurs political expenditure without being appropriately registered,’ Peta says.
Organisations will have to keep records to show whether donations of more than $250 were from ‘allowable donors’ (generally an Australian citizen or permanent resident).
The legislation’s key clause defines political purpose to mean any of the following purposes:
(a) the public expression by any means of views on a political party, a candidate in an election or a member of the House of Representatives or the Senate;
(b) the public expression by any means of views on an issue that is, or is likely to be, before electors in an election (whether or not a writ has been issued for the election);
(c) the communicating of any electoral matter;
(d) the broadcast of political matter (other than political broadcasts covered by the Broadcasting Services Act 1992); and
(e) the carrying out of an opinion poll, or other research, relating to an election or the voting intentions of electors.
If organisations spend more than $100,000 a years on advocacy, it will have to register as a ‘political campaigner’. The immediate impact of this will be extra record-keeping and a requirement to supply an annual return, within 16 weeks of the end of the financial year, which includes:
Details of directors and senior staff including membership of political parties;
Details of grants, contracts, payments and other benefits from the commonwealth, State or territory government which require discretionary decision-making
An auditor’s report, and
A signed statement that any foreign donations have not been used for domestic political purposes.
‘The government has also indicated that it wishes to remove charitable status from organisations whose sole focus is advocacy. If a community housing organisations lost its charity status, it could potentially face a significant increase in staff and other operating costs,’ Peta says.
The charity sector, led by ACOSS, has lobbied strongly against the Bill under the ‘Hands Off Our Charities’ banner and has called for all registered charities to be exempted from the Bill’s reporting and disclosure requirements.
‘However there is a strong public policy argument in favour of seeking to limit the influence of foreign actors on Australia’s democratic system,’ Peta says.
‘This is a complex area and CHIA has adopted a balanced response in its submission to the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral matters, arguing that the Bill needs further consideration, and that there is a strong case for exempting charities that receive no or small foreign donations.’
The committee will report to Parliament by 6 March and you can download CHIA’s letter to the committee here.
CHIA Chair Michael Lennon has told the Senate Economics References Committee inquiry into the National Housing and Homelessness Agreement (NHHA) that a national housing strategy is absolutely critical to fix Australia’s social housing shortfall
Michael told the Senate inquiry that halting and reversing the decline of social housing stock over the past 15 years would take a significant commitment from all levels of government and all political parties, over several decades and is unlikely to be achieved without national oversight
The inquiry is investigating the development of an agreement that will replace the existing National Affordable Housing Agreement between the states and the Commonwealth, which has failed to deliver an increase in social housing over the past decade.
The new agreement presents the perfect opportunity for the states and the Commonwealth to collaborate on a National Housing Strategy to guide investment over the longer term, Michael told the inquiry.
‘A National Housing Strategy is one of the missing pieces of the puzzle. If the NHHA legislation requires states and territories to have housing and homelessness strategies, it is entirely appropriate that the Commonwealth also has a National Strategy,’ Michael said.
‘In fact, it makes no sense to plan otherwise.’
Michael also detailed the core elements that needed to be included in state and territory housing strategies, such as specific targets and strategies to improve Indigenous housing outcomes, mechanisms to support the bond aggregator in providing long-term and low cost finance for social housing, and consistent national regulation and standards to be applied equally to community and public housing.
Michael also argued that the states and territories should transfer 50 per cent of public housing dwellings to the community housing sector.
‘Community housing is the only arm of social housing which is growing in size, capacity, and sophistication. Unlike public housing, community housing has a strong track record of leveraging assets to increase the number and quality of social housing dwellings.
‘Expanding the community housing sector also provides healthy competition and promotes choice for tenants.’
