Inquiry into Increasing Affordable Housing Supply: Evidence-based Principles and Strategies for Australian Policy and Practice

Key findings This is the Final Report of an AHURI Inquiry into the range of strategies and initiatives that governments have used to leverage affordable housing supply in a constrained funding and increasingly market-driven context. With existing levels of social housing insufficient to meet current and projected needs, an estimated deficit of over 200,000 affordable dwellings, and mounting barriers to first home ownership, the need for significant reform and innovation across the governance, policy and financial parameters framing affordable housing supply is widely recognised (Yates 2016, Ong, Dalton et al. 2017, Rowley, Leishman et al. 2017). Through three interlinked research projects and engagement with policy and industry through panel meetings and during the research itself through interviews and dialogue, this Inquiry examined how governments have sought to increase the supply of affordable housing across the continuum of housing needs; and the implications for transferring policy and practice to different jurisdictions and market contexts. Drawing on recent, but established, cases these projects examined: • how governments have sought to catalyse market activity and generate industry innovation through investment, partnerships, institutional support, financial products and tenure arrangements • the outcomes of planning system approaches to boost the supply of affordable homes or overcome barriers to their development, and • the ways in which different subsidy levers and financial arrangements come together in a series of case study exemplar projects that address local housing need, and the demonstrable affordability outcomes for given policy scenarios in different market contexts. Key findings are summarised below. How have governments sought to catalyse market activity and generate industry innovation, to support affordable housing supply? • Australian Government funding has proved critical in delivering affordable housing at scale, for example social housing delivered as part of the Nation Building Initiative, and affordable rental housing delivered under the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS). Although not ongoing, these national funding schemes catalysed greater industry innovation and diversified the range of affordable rental housing options delivered in Australia.