National Shelter and the Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) have welcomed the release of the first national wellbeing framework – Measuring What Matters.

Both organisations made individual submissions to the Stage One consultation, and a combined submission to the Stage Two consultation following consultation with the sector in May this year. In our submissions we made the case that the draft framework would be considerably strengthened by the addition of housing indicators. We very much welcome the incorporation of these indicators in the final version.

It is critical that a national wellbeing framework includes measures relating to housing and homelessness, as housing outcomes have implications on the health and wellbeing of families, particularly children, and community wellbeing.

The Measuring What Matters framework is designed to better track outcomes in Australia’s society and economy. The measures are in addition to the more traditional economic ways of measuring such as GDP, employment, wages, and inflation.

The Framework has five wellbeing themes, supported by 12 dimensions, and 50 key indicators.

One of these themes is ‘secure’ – A society where people live peacefully, feel safe, have financial security and access to housing. This includes measures of making ends meet, homelessness, and housing serviceability.

This first report tells us what many of us already know but still important it is reflected in the framework :

• That the rate of people experiencing homelessness has deteriorated in the fifteen years to 2021
• That the proportion of housing costs to household gross income differs between tenures with a higher proportion of private rental households paying more than 30% of their income on housing than those with a mortgage.
• That the proportion of households who are able to meet basic financial commitments has also deteriorated, with almost 20% of households unable to raise $2000 in an emergency.

The Measuring What Matters website includes the Statement, Framework, and Dashboard.

The government has indicated that the framework is a ‘living document’ and will be improved via stakeholder engagement.  The dashboard will be updated regularly to reflect progress. Our organisations look forward to making further contributions to the process.