Reviewing the Social Housing Initiative

Australia is characterised by a complex and shifting social housing landscape (see Chapters 9 and 11). Despite the residualised nature of social housing, the election of a social democratic Commonwealth government in 2007 marked a renewed interest in housing (and urban) policy. Important policy interventions included the introduction of the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) and the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS). ¹ While these policy initiatives represented significant and long overdue Commonwealth engagement with housing, such programs were disrupted by the 2007-2009 Global Financial Crisis (GFC). The GFC saw Commonwealth supported housing initiatives transformed from broader social equity objectives (albeit couched within language of economic productivity) to a mechanism to stimulate the economy. The Social Housing Initiative (SHI) was introduced as part of the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan (NBESP) which sought to address the risk of a collapse in house prices and loss of construction and finance industry jobs (Milligan and Pinnegar 2010). The SHI represented the single biggest investment in social housing in recent decades and acted as a catalyst for restructuring social housing provision by supporting a fledgling community housing sector. According to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG 2009a: 7), the SHI would ‘drive significant reform of social housing through consolidation of waiting lists, growth of the not-for-profit sector, funding reform and reduction of concentrations of disadvantage’.