The National Affordable Housing Alliance (NAHA) has proposed a suite of new policy measures targeting Australia’s worsening affordable housing and homelessness crisis.

The unified alliance, comprising of peak property, building, community housing, social services, union and industry superannuation groups, has drawn upon the collective expertise of its members as well as experts in the field to develop these policy options, which would facilitate a substantial increase in the supply of affordable and social housing. If implemented by the Australian Government, these policies have the potential to deliver an additional 11,150 to 14,950 social and affordable homes every year on top of the new supply already being created by state and territory governments through separate initiatives.

According to NAHA, Australia’s affordability crisis comes from a long-term deterioration in housing affordability on the one hand, and a growing shortage of affordable housing on the other.

Australia will require an investment of around $290 billion over the next two decades to meet the shortfall in social and affordable housing dwellings, a recent independent review for the Federal Government has revealed.

“Significantly improving people’s access to housing that is safe, secure and affordable for the occupants has to be put high on the policy agenda for 2022 and beyond,” NAHA chair Rod Fehring says.

“Despite significant efforts by governments, as well as community, and the private sector over the past thirty-plus years, Australia’s social and affordable housing and homelessness crisis has continued to worsen.

“We must urgently adopt new approaches backed by new alliances, supporters and sources of capital, to not only halt but gradually reverse this decline and substantially increase the supply of social and affordable housing in an enduring, systematic and self-sustaining way.”

NAHA’s four initial core policies include:

  1. Implementing a Housing Capital Aggregator supported by refundable Affordable Housing Tax Offsets to incentivise and crowd in institutional investment in new social and affordable housing supply.
  2. Establishing a Social and Affordable Housing Future Fund with an initial $20 billion in funds under management to close the social and affordable housing funding gap.
  3. Activating Affordable Build-to-Rent housing as a vehicle to deliver additional social and affordable housing.
  4. Enhancing state and territory-based planning and development contributions legislation to prioritise up to 1% of infrastructure contributions and levies to be aggregated and channelled into social and affordable housing provision consistent with state and territory housing policies across Australia.

In addition to an integrated database that tracks the delivery of social and affordable housing delivery at a national and regional level, NAHA is also seeking a minimum of 25% from the total net new additional supply to be dedicated to addressing the needs of the most vulnerable households as social housing with rents capped below 30% of household income.

The alliance’s core members include the Australian Council of Trade Unions, the Australian Council of Social Service, the Community Housing Industry Association, Industry Super Australia, Homelessness Australia, the Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia, National Shelter and the Property Council of Australia.

A copy of NAHA’s paper ‘Increasing the Supply of Social and Affordable Housing at Scale and in Perpetuity: Policy Options’ is available at www.nationalaffordablehousingalliance.com.