New legislation introduced in parliament this week has met with widespread support from the industry.
The proposed bills establishing the Housing Australia Future Fund, the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, and Housing Australia are important steps in addressing Australia’s housing supply shortage, according to Property Council of Australia Chief Executive Mike Zorbas.
“The legislation is an important first step to get government working together with industry to bridge the national housing deficit and stimulate new supply that Australia desperately needs”, Zorbas added.
“We strongly support giving the Housing Supply and Affordability Council a broad mandate and powers that would allow it to assess the performance of the housing system and state and territory and local governments’ capacity to meet demand across the housing spectrum.”
Introducing the bills to Parliament, Minister for Housing the Hon Julie Collins MP said that the structure of the Housing Australia Future Fund will protect it from the whims of future governments.
“The Fund will generate returns over the long term, which will allow it to provide annual disbursements to deliver a secure pipeline of funding for social and affordable housing in Australia”, Collins said, adding that this will provide critical certainty to Australia’s community housing providers and will invite new contributions to social and affordable housing from institutional investors.
“As announced in the October 2022-23 Budget, disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund will be used to fund social and affordable homes and other acute housing needs”, she said.
“In the first five years of operation, the government intends to use disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund to help build:
– 20,000 homes to provide social housing – 4,000 of which will be allocated to women and children leaving domestic and family violence and older women on low incomes who are at risk of homelessness; and
– 10,000 affordable homes for frontline workers like police, nurses and cleaners who kept us safe during the pandemic.”
Minister Collins also noted that the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation, which will be renamed as Housing Australia, will be responsible for administering the majority of disbursements from the Housing Australia Future Fund to help build the 30,000 social and affordable homes in the Fund’s first five years. Over the same time period, the Fund will also provide:
– $200 million for the repair, maintenance and improvements of housing in remote Indigenous communities;
– $100 million for crisis and transitional housing options for women and children leaving domestic and family violence and older women on low incomes who are at risk of homelessness; and
– $30 million to build housing and fund specialist services for veterans experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness.
Launching a new report, ‘A Stark Reality’ with Minister Collins at Parliament House, the Property Council proposed giving the newly-formed Housing Supply and Affordability Council the mandate to review and publish scorecards on the states and territories’ housing supply efforts and the effectiveness of planning regimes across the country.
“The Housing Supply and Affordability Council has no time to waste in reviewing barriers to institutional investment in housing,” Mike Zorbas said.
“If we are serious about increasing housing choice and affordability, we need immediate changes to tax settings that would create a level playing field for build-to-rent and unlock a sorely needed new stream of housing supply, as well as more supply of retirement living communities and purpose-built student accommodation”, he concluded.
