Last month was a big month for CHIA as we hosted the 2024 Affordable Housing Development and Investment Summit on 26 – 28 February in Melbourne. Over three days the 400 plus delegates were treated to a series of excellent speakers from the housing, homelessness, finance and property worlds.
The first day was devoted to affordable build to rent housing and the settings required to unleash its potential. Amongst those sharing their perspectives were Alex Notay, Placemaking and Investment Director at Thriving Investments the fund and asset management arm of the not for profit Places for People Group, Michael Lennon, a member of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council and Adrian Harrington, former chair of what is now Housing Australia. NSW’s development agency Landcom spoke about how their plans to enable affordable rental housing.
Over the main conference we talked mobilising institutional investment with Brian Motz, Chief Financial and Commercial Director at Housing Choices Australia, Carolyn Viney, CEO at Super Housing Partnerships and Kris Daff, Manager Director at Assemble. Julie Saunders, Director at Urbis looked at how well the current state planning systems were set to deliver more housing. While Ryan Van Den Noulewant, UNSW, Leonie King from City West Housing and Jo Cannington from the City of Melbourne championed inclusionary zoning as an enabler of more social and affordable rental housing. Jennifer Michelmore at Studio THI talked about way to gain community support for new housing development.
Hal Pawson from the City Futures Research Centre explained how much social housing we need and Michele Adair, Chair of Homes Tasmania spoke about what the State’s new housing strategy had planned to doing to meet its housing needs.
Marcus Spiller, SGS Economic and Planning, Ad Hereijgers, Ritterwald and Andrew Hannan, CHC explained why the community housing sector had enthusiastically embraced ESG reporting.
Housing Australia’s Nathan Dal Bon set out the ambition behind Housing Australia Future Fund and Turi Condon, also from Housing Australia chaired a panel of investors – Ryan Slocombe, Tetris Capital, Alison Chan, Metrics and Iain Wood, Conscious Investment Management, keen to support social and affordable housing.
Great key notes from Wayne Swan, Chair of CBUS; Zach Smith, from the CFMEU on the union’s proposal for a mega profits tax to fund social and affordable housing; and Matthew Bailes at Paradigm Housing Group explained what enabled the growth of the not for profit sector in the UK. Steve Pomeroy from McMaster University in Ottawa dissected the Canadian housing strategy.
We also had sessions on regional housing – thanks to Trudi Ray at Haven Home Safe, Maree McKenzie at Homes North and Frances Paterson Fiedler at Community Housing Central Australia.
And we concluded with Erin Dolan, from the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Fund facilitating a discussion on housing models to complement the mainstream. .
Apologies for those I have missed out – there are more on my recent linked in post ((35) Post | Feed | LinkedIn
