It is good to see the first round of the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and National Housing Accord open in January 2024. There appears to be strong interest with reports of 250 eligible groups formally expressing interest in accessing funding. The 40,000 social and affordable housing the initiatives will deliver, together with the additional homes planned or under construction by the states and territories, will start to make inroads into the massive shortfall in social and affordable housing. However, we need to build on this start and establish mechanisms that can support an annual program. We have to move away from the stop / start nature of current initiatives. It’s why the long term trend (see the analysis of the Report of Government Services -ROGS – below.) has seen social housing decline as proportion of all residential dwellings.

The forthcoming National Housing and Homelessness Plan must acknowledge and quantify the extent to which housing system outcomes are currently falling short of reasonable expectations. It must define the short, medium and long term actions needed to correct the situation. Our submission to the Plan’s Issues Paper argues that these actions must include commitment to a long-term national social and affordable rental housing program, tax reform and measures to improve access to appropriate housing for people with disability, young people and, First Nation’s peoples.

For CHIA’s pre-budget submission we have set out three actions that can be taken in 2024-25 that are relatively modest in dollar terms, are non-inflationary, and are designed to enhance outcomes from current initiatives. That is, to ‘bridge the gap’ before the longer term actions we hope to see in the Plan, kick in. These are:

1. Increasing the scope and ambition of the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) by expanding the size of its capital investment from $10 billion to at least $20 billion
2. Fostering the capacity of the community housing industry to deliver more choice for low-income renters through contributing $3.0 million annually to a National Community Housing Industry Development Strategy, to support the further growth of a strong, viable and well performing sector.
3. Leading the overhaul of the National Regulatory System for Community Housing (NRSCH), in line with the yet to be fully implemented 2017 recommendations of the last Government’s Affordable Housing Working Group and the findings from the 2021 statutory review.

Along with our colleagues in the housing sector we will continue to call for more ambition on housing.