Community housing is not a silver bullet to Canada’s housing crisis. But a strong community housing sector can play a significant role in providing all Canadians with the right to adequate housing.
Rent assistance can ease rental stress, but it won’t help low-income earners find secure and affordable housing when it’s in such short supply, nor stop disadvantage being concentrated in some areas.
While the Productivity Commission’s critique of the national housing agreement is justified, its faith in the market is not. The Albanese government is right to invest in building social housing.
The shortfall of social housing has built up over decades. Even after the building program is complete, the gap between housing supply and the numbers on waiting lists will still be huge.
The pandemic has brought to a head deep-rooted problems with how housing is provided in Australia. Fortunately, the solutions can play a central role in the national recovery process.
A home, a springboard, or a safety net? New research finds a surprisingly large number of Australians have lived in social housing since 2000, using it in several very different ways.
Helping tenants find work supposedly creates a pathway into private rental housing, freeing up social housing for others. Private rental costs and the situations of many tenants make that unrealistic.
It’s time to tackle the shortage of public housing head-on, rather than skirt around the problem. Public housing is the single most cost-effective way to turn around the rise in homelessness.
The need to manage long waiting lists for social housing, rather than serving the best interests of tenants and prospective tenants, is a major driver of policymakers’ approach.
The policy focus remains on home ownership, but a new survey shows slight improvements in affordability do little to help people on low incomes. Their plight calls for better social housing policy.
For the first time a state government housing agency has effectively contracted out all its operations in some regions, but will this improve and add to the total social housing stock?
Labor has made a substantial commitment to tackling inequality in Australia, but has taken a second-best approach to overcoming the huge shortfall of social housing.
Much of the innovation in providing social housing is coming from community housing providers around the country. And it’s desperately needed given the state of housing inequality in Australia.
Another affordable housing pact between the Commonwealth, states and territories came into effect this month. But with no new funding, the agreement may be different from predecessors in name only.
The government’s £163m fund would provide much-needed boost for community-led housing organisations – but it might also take away their control over new developments.
When the city centre was revitalised in the 1990s, homeless people were pushed out. With homelessness rising today, it’s important to recognise the links between urban development and displacement.
If local government is to deliver affordable housing, state and federal governments must assist. Even councils as powerful and well resourced as the City of Sydney cannot do it by themselves.
A decade after the launch of a national campaign to reduce homelessness, the latest figures show Australia is going backwards. Research points to problems in the public housing system as a key factor.
The clichés about housing supply and regulatory restraints are distractions from the need to focus on expanding the affordable housing sector to directly meet the needs of low-income households.
Professor; School of Economics, Finance and Property, and Director, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Curtin Research Centre, Curtin University
PhD Candidate, School of Social Sciences, University of Tasmania, and Senior Research Consultant, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology Sydney