CHIA is supporting ACOSS in its advocacy to improve energy performance for low income housing, including extending current initiatives to properly finance and fund retrofitting of low income housing, including community housing dwellings. The report calls for the Federal government to inject an initial $2 billion ‘to invest in deep and rapid energy performance and climate-resilience retrofit programs, tailored across low-income housing tenure types’ to amongst other aims ‘support a seven year program’ to retrofit all social housing’. The report also calls for states and territories to collaborate and contribute additional money to the fund. The aim is to create the scale needed to incentivise the retrofitting industry and to make solutions more cost effective.

The report finds bolstering energy efficiency, electrifying and installing solar to low-income
housing is a low-cost way to tackle the cost of living crisis and end energy poverty.

It also calls for the Federal government to:

• Work with state and local government to establish an Environmental Upgrade
  Finance (EUF) program offering long-term and low-interest loans that are repaid through
  council rates;
• Funding zero-interest loans and subsidies for low-income owner-occupiers, and
  low-interest loans and conditional subsidies to landlords for private rental properties tied
  to minimum energy standards until the EUF is up and running.