The Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) congratulates Anthony Albanese and the Australian Labor Party on Saturday’s election victory. “We look forward to working with an Albanese Government over the next term to tackle systemic housing unaffordability across Australia” said Wendy Hayhurst, CHIA’s CEO.
CHIA fully supports the new Government’s pre-election housing commitments, including establishing an Australian Housing Future Fund to invest in 30,000 new social and affordable dwellings.
Ms Hayhurst noted, “The Fund is a great start. We also know there’s a lot more to do; social housing has reduced to less than one in twenty homes across Australia. That’s because public and community housing has grown by only 4% over the past 25 years while our population has increased by 30%. Only 1-2% of housing built each year is social and affordable housing – far short of the 16% we managed in 1950s and 1960s”.
She went on to say, “That’s why we also strongly welcome the institutional reforms in the ALP’s housing platform. The housing plan, the proposed Housing Supply and Affordability Council and the new national housing agency – Housing Australia – aren’t made for a media sound bite. But together they should provide the necessary foundation for a serious effort to tackle our national housing affordability problem. This is a long term project that requires a non-partisan approach to delivery”
Andrew Hannan, CHIA’s Chair said that community housing industry was well-placed to play a lead role in working with, and co-investing alongside, governments and the private sector to tackle this big, but solvable national challenge. “The sector now manages over 100,000 homes, has $18 billion in assets and brings in $1.8 billion every year in revenue. In our Federal election ‘platform’ CHIA proposed a range of cost-effective measures that could build on the ALP’s existing commitments and help meet the new government’s housing objectives.”
He went on to say that “CHIA would also like to thank the outgoing government for their support to community housing, specifically through the establishment of the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC). NHFIC has transformed community housing organisations’ access to lower cost and longer term finance and put us in a far better position to respond to opportunities to build social and affordable housing”.
