Australia’s system of social and affordable housing is failing and needs to be reimagined, a new report suggests.

The Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) has released a report based on an inquiry which it conducted into socially supported housing pathways.

In addition to more social housing supply, the report says that the nation needs to adopt a more flexible model of housing assistance.

This would support more households and would include those on waiting lists.

“Housing assistance needs to be delivered differently,” says lead author of the research, Dr Chris Martin from UNSW Sydney.

“Australia’s social housing system needs to make stronger assurances of different kinds of housing assistance that reach beyond the constraints of unavailable social housing stock. It needs to do more for the people who are waiting, as well as for those already in social housing.”

The report comes as the number of people on social housing wait lists continues to grow.

Over the five years to June 2023, data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare suggests that the waiting list for public and social housing increased by almost 30,000 from 140,758 to 169,609.

Over that same period, the number of greatest priority households on waiting lists increased from 45,828 to 69,659.

All up, around 824,000 live in public and social housing across Australia.

As a result, there have been calls for greater investment to build more public and social housing stock.

Toward this end, the Commonwealth Government has established the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund. This has been widely applauded by housing and homelessness advocacy groups. Indeed, such groups have called for the fund to be increased in size.

Beyond that, however, the report suggests that Australia’s approach to housing assistance should be reimagined.

As things stand, AHURI says that the focus of support revolves specifically around a rationed stock of social housing dwellings. These are managed by state and territory housing authorities and by community housing providers.

In addition, the Commonwealth provides support to low-income households in the private market through Commonwealth Rent Assistance.

However, the report calls for change in three areas.

First, it says that more could be done to provide support and options for those households who are currently on waiting lists.

Potentially, these could include rent subsidies for very-low income households living in the private rental sector, various forms of temporary accommodation, bond assistance and first home buyer assistance.

Next, legal and regulatory changes could deliver greater clarity on eligibility and entitlements to social housing and rent assistance.

As things stand, the report suggests that the foundations of the legal framework which governs social housing provision are less robust compared with what many people would imagine.

While state and territory governments have statutory authorities that own and manage public housing, their laws say little about how such authorities are to operate and support people.

Important matters such as eligibility are left to policies that can be changed with little oversight or may not keep up with changes in housing costs and incomes.

These laws also fail to cover other forms of housing assistance that may be offered by social housing providers.

All of this, the report says, means that the system ‘makes legally weak assurances of assistance.’

Instead, Martin says that housing legislation should enshrine the right of individuals to reasonable and necessary housing assistance.

The legal framework should also provide for a range of forms of housing assistance that are designed in participation with recipients to better meet their needs.

Finally, the report calls for a co-design approach to refocus social housing policies and practices.

Under this approach, housing authorities would partner with tenants, people with lived experience, frontline service delivery providers and housing and homelessness sector representatives when designing policies and new forms of assistance.

Housing providers and applicants could also adopt co-design principles to develop targeted individual housing plans.

According to the report, such plans can benefit priority applicants—as a focus for support work—as well as non-priority applicants.

It says that this may create possibilities for alternative forms of housing assistance for applicants on waitlists for social housing.

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