Housing Australia Future Fund Industry Positioning Paper  

The Challenge

Australia experiences a shortfall in social and affordable housing. This shortfall is expected to increase to over 700,000 dwellings by 2036.

The Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) will provide homes to some of Australia's most vulnerable. However, the HAFF is not just about delivering the announced 30,000 homes. Rather, it is the next phase of sector strengthening reform that ensures the continued delivery of social housing.

The Community Housing Industry Association of Australia(CHIA) represents over 160 community housing organisations across Australia. Consultation with members identified key aspects of the HAFF policy design and delivery that should be further considered by the Commonwealth as it finalises the required legislation, investment mandate and policy parameters.

The Action

Polis partners was engaged by CHIA to develop a report which aims to influence the HAFF policy development and rollout in 2023 to ensure the members of CHIA are involved and ready to capitalise on the new policy and funding environment.  Inputs into this report required intensive and coordinated stakeholder engagement with both the key government players and CHIA members.

The first step was to engage with National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC), Treasury and other Commonwealth bodies to find out what aspects of the HAFF were still open to influence.

The second step involved surveying CHIA members with questions focusing on the potential risks and opportunities associated with strengthening the design of the HAFF. This helped us unlock vital issues, identified the CHIA-led pipeline of development sites and locations across Australia and demonstrated to members that CHIA was taking decisive action on their behalf.

Follow up targeted discussions with over 40 select CHIA members and stakeholders were undertaken which provided additional details to the issues identified in the survey. Examples and case studies were also identified throughout these discussions which provided further evidence and emphasis on why a particular policy reform did or did not work.

The findings were collated and distilled into key elements that aim to maximise the long-term impacts on the social and affordable housing sector and ultimately the number of houses delivered to the community.

The Results

Our study resulted in the completion of a public facing report for CHIA and its members. The report can be found here – Community Housing Industry Association. This report was used as a basis by CHIA to negotiate and argue a number of key issues analysed in the report to be amended or specifically included within the proposed deliverability of the HAFF by Housing Australia.