WeRise · Policy platform
Housing
Key findings
- 33.1% of median incomeIn 2025, the median new lease required a record 33.1% of median household income nationally – before food, transport, energy or childcare. Source: National Housing Supply and Affordability Council · State of the Housing System 2026 · 2026
- 122,494 peopleThe 2021 Census counted 122,494 people experiencing homelessness on one night in Australia. Source: Australian Bureau of Statistics · Estimating Homelessness: Census 2021 · 2023
- 262,000 homes shortAustralia was forecast to complete 938,000 dwellings against the National Housing Accord target of 1.2 million homes by June 2029. Source: National Housing Supply and Affordability Council · State of the Housing System 2025 · 2025
- 450,607 social homesAt June 2025, Australia had 450,607 social housing dwellings for a population of more than 27 million – far too few to meet assessed need. Source: Productivity Commission · Report on Government Services 2026: Housing and Homelessness · 2026
Part 01
The Case for Change
Why Housing matters
Homes for living, not merely assets
Australia needs a housing system that treats security, affordability and belonging as public goods.
Australia’s housing crisis is now constraining the country’s social mobility, economic productivity and basic dignity. A home is where children sleep before school, workers recover before a shift, older people age safely, families escape violence, and communities form. When secure housing fails, pressure moves immediately into health services, schools, child protection, justice systems, emergency accommodation and household debt.
In 2025, the median new lease absorbed 33.1% of median household income nationally – the highest recorded share in the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council series.1 New mortgage repayments absorbed 45.9% of median household income, and the median household faced an estimated 11.2 years to save a deposit.2 These national measures conceal sharper hardship for low-income households, single-parent families, people receiving income support and households living in high-rent metropolitan and regional markets.
The consequence is not only delayed home ownership. It is forced mobility, overcrowding, long commutes, family separation, housing insecurity and homelessness. The ABS estimated that 122,494 people were experiencing homelessness on Census night in 2021. Of these, 39.1% were living in severely crowded dwellings – not necessarily visible on a street, but without a home that meets basic standards of privacy and adequacy.3 More than one in five people experiencing homelessness was aged 12 to 24.4
Australia does have important institutional capacity. At June 2025, 450,607 social housing dwellings housed 429,567 households. Public and community housing demonstrably reduces rent stress: only 0.2% of public-housing households, 0.3% of state-owned and managed Indigenous housing households, and 3.7% of community-housing households were in rental stress at June 2025.5 The lesson is not that social housing is perfect. It is that permanent, non-market housing provides a level of security that private markets routinely fail to offer to households on low incomes.
The national policy task is larger than any one lever. More homes must be built near jobs, rail, schools and services. Governments must acquire and assemble land, finance construction at scale, coordinate infrastructure, lift construction capacity and speed approvals without weakening building safety, accessibility, consultation or environmental protection. Renters need predictable tenure, fair limits on avoidable rent shocks, minimum standards, transparent databases and effective enforcement. People facing eviction, violence, discharge from hospital, prison or out-of-home care require early intervention and a guaranteed pathway to housing.
The National Housing Accord has recognised the need for national coordination, but delivery remains behind its stated target. The NHSAC projected 938,000 dwellings during the Accord period, 262,000 below the 1.2 million target.6 A serious response must therefore pair accelerated supply with a clear affordability mission: homes built with public assistance should deliver enduring public benefit, not simply add to the aggregate dwelling count.
WeRise proposes a Housing Guarantee: a long-term national agreement to make safe, secure and affordable housing real for everyone, beginning with those for whom the market has failed most severely.
Part 02
Evidence and Experience
Housing: what other countries show
The world has already tested the alternatives
Finland · Vienna, Austria · Scotland · Singapore
International evidence does not provide a single plug-and-play model for Australia. Land institutions, constitutional arrangements, tenure cultures, welfare systems and construction sectors differ. But successful systems show common principles: permanent non-market housing at scale; prevention rather than crisis management; reliable public finance; land policy that protects affordability; and renter protections that are enforceable rather than symbolic.
Finland demonstrates that homelessness can fall when permanent housing with support replaces staircase models requiring people to become “housing ready.” Vienna demonstrates the long-term value of municipal land policy, public construction and a broad social-housing sector. Scotland offers relevant lessons in statutory prevention duties, social-housing allocation and rent regulation, while Singapore illustrates the state capacity required to deliver mass housing through public land, long-term finance and institutional continuity. Australia should learn from their mechanisms rather than copy their legal structures.
Finland · 2008–present
Housing First national programmes, initially PAAVO I (2008–11) and subsequent national strategies; permanent tenancy is provided without sobriety, treatment or “housing readiness” preconditions, with tailored support services. Residents generally contribute rent through ordinary income and housing-benefit arrangements. Finland partnered with the Y-Foundation and other providers to expand supported and ordinary housing pathways; OECD reports 18,000 apartments associated with the national Housing First initiative.
- Total homelessness declined from more than 18,000 people in 1987 to fewer than 3,500 in 2023.
- Long-term homelessness fell by more than 70% between 2008 and 2023, to around 1,000 people.
- Finland’s annual data collection provides a consistent national measure, rather than relying only on rough-sleeping counts.
- The approach replaces emergency accommodation and conditional “staircase” services with ordinary homes plus voluntary support.
- At the end of 2024, Finland counted 3,806 people without homes, illustrating substantial progress but not complete eradication.
Australia should establish Housing First as the default response for people experiencing chronic homelessness, coupled with properly funded mental health, alcohol and other drug, disability, family violence and tenancy support. Housing First cannot be scaled without a permanent supply of homes; support services alone cannot compensate for housing scarcity.
Vienna, Austria · 1920s–present; contemporary municipal and limited-profit housing model
Municipal rental housing and subsidised co-operative/limited-profit housing; public subsidy is tied to construction, land, quality and long-term affordability conditions rather than a short-term household payment. Approximately 220,000 municipal dwellings and 200,000 co-operative flats built with municipal subsidy; around 50% of Vienna’s population lives in subsidised housing.
- Vienna’s municipal system comprises approximately 220,000 dwellings.
- A further approximately 200,000 co-operative flats have been built with municipal subsidy.
- Around 50% of Vienna residents live in subsidised dwellings.
- Vienna’s 1,800 municipal housing estates house close to 500,000 residents.
- The model has endured because land, finance, procurement and rent regulation are treated as a continuing public system rather than one-off crisis spending.
Australia cannot recreate Vienna’s history overnight, but it can adopt the institutional principle: governments should retain land, develop public and not-for-profit capacity, and require long-duration affordability in subsidised projects. A public developer and state land banks can make affordable supply durable instead of dependent on annual grant rounds.
Scotland · 2018–present; Housing First Pathfinder and national homelessness-prevention reforms
Housing First provides ordinary, permanent tenancies with intensive, flexible support for people with multiple and enduring experiences of homelessness. The Housing (Scotland) Act 2025 establishes a long-term rent-control framework and stronger protections related to eviction enforcement. By 31 March 2025, 2,154 people had received keys to settled homes through Scotland’s Housing First monitoring framework.
- 2,154 people with the hardest experiences of homelessness had received keys to settled homes by 31 March 2025.
- 83% of participants remained in Housing First tenancies 12 months after entry.
- 82% of unintentionally homeless households – 24,033 households – secured settled accommodation in 2024–25.
- Social landlords allocated 46% of homes to homeless households in 2024–25.
- Scotland invested £808 million in its affordable housing supply programme in 2025–26.
A national Housing First guarantee should be paired with statutory prevention duties that require public agencies to act before eviction, discharge, violence or institutional exit becomes homelessness. The Scottish experience also shows that successful homelessness policy requires social-housing vacancies and new supply, not only case management.
Singapore · 1960–present
State-led Housing and Development Board (HDB) development, sale of long-term leasehold flats, public-land assembly, subsidised loans and eligibility rules structured around owner occupation and household formation. Singapore’s HDB has built more than one million flats; around 80% of resident households live in HDB flats.
- The HDB model uses public land assembly, standardised delivery and long-term institutional capacity to build at scale.
- HDB housing is principally long-term leasehold rather than freehold, allowing the state to preserve a continuing role in land value and redevelopment.
- The model demonstrates the effect of aligning land, finance, construction and infrastructure under one delivery institution.
- It has also drawn criticism over eligibility, resale-market pressures, asset concentration and the limits of a heavily ownership-centred system.
- It is not directly transferable to Australia because Singapore is a city-state with radically different land, population and constitutional conditions.
The relevant lesson is delivery capacity, not wholesale replication. Australia needs public development institutions able to assemble land, finance infrastructure, procure at scale, maintain design standards and retain affordability conditions for decades. Australia should avoid importing the model’s restrictive social eligibility rules or treating ownership as the only secure tenure.
Part 03
Costs and Trade-offs
The cost of Housing
Housing costs money – housing failure costs more
The real question is whether Australia pays upfront for secure homes or repeatedly pays for crisis.
A serious housing plan requires large public investment, and its costs should not be concealed. Building and acquiring social and affordable homes, upgrading existing stock, funding homelessness support, expanding planning capacity, delivering enabling infrastructure and strengthening renters’ protections all have budgetary consequences. Some are direct Commonwealth costs; others fall to states, territories and local government; others are borne through concessional finance or public balance sheets.
But gross expenditure is not the same as net fiscal cost. Public and community housing generates rental income, creates a tangible public asset, reduces recurrent crisis spending, and can lower demand on emergency accommodation, health, justice and child-protection systems. The savings are real but must not be double-counted: they accrue across governments, over time, and depend on implementation quality. They should be independently costed before adoption.
The existing system already involves substantial public expenditure. State and territory governments spent $5.9 billion recurrently on social housing in 2024–25, while governments spent $1.8 billion on specialist homelessness services. [] The Commonwealth’s $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund supports a long-duration financing mechanism, and Housing Australia reported $14 billion in financing commitments in 2024–25 for 18,650 social and affordable homes. [] []
WeRise should therefore publish a fully costed ten-year housing investment program through the Parliamentary Budget Office before election release. The policy principle is clear: shift resources from open-ended tax preferences and expensive crisis responses toward permanently affordable homes, with transparent targets and annual public reporting.
| Item | Amount | Note |
|---|---|---|
| National Housing Guarantee capital program – construction, acquisition and renewal of public, community-controlled and not-for-profit affordable homes | To be independently costed; staged ten-year capital commitment | No policy-grade figure should be claimed until a build target, tenure mix, land contribution and state co-funding formula are specified. |
| Existing state and territory recurrent social-housing expenditure | -$5.9 billion in 2024–25 | Baseline recurrent expenditure across public housing, state-owned and managed Indigenous housing and associated social housing programs. |
| Existing government specialist-homelessness-services expenditure | -$1.8 billion in 2024–25 | Baseline annual service expenditure; investment in permanent housing should reduce crisis dependence over time, not replace support needs. |
| Housing Australia Future Fund capital base | -$10 billion | Commonwealth capital base underpinning annual disbursements for social and affordable housing; it is financing capacity, not an annual expenditure figure. |
| Housing Australia social and affordable financing commitments | -$14 billion committed in 2024–25 | Financing committed through HAFFF and NHAF arrangements to support 18,650 dwellings; commitments are not equivalent to completed dwellings. |
| Potential revenue from selected negative-gearing and CGT-discount reform options | +$16 billion to +$60 billion over 2023–24 to 2033–34 | Parliamentary Budget Office modelling cited by Treasury; range depends on the specific reform package and is not a single-policy estimate. |
| Avoided crisis and service costs | To be independently modelled | Potential savings across temporary accommodation, health, justice and child protection are plausible but must be costed by jurisdiction and should not be assumed as immediate cash savings. |
| Net cost estimate | Not yet claimable | A credible net estimate requires a defined dwelling target, capital profile, tax package, financing structure, land contributions and independently modelled service offsets. |
The strongest objections to Housing
The strongest critique of an ambitious housing program is that it risks spending substantial public money without materially improving affordability.
This is a serious concern. If governments subsidise demand in a constrained market, the benefit can be absorbed into land values, rents or developer margins. If they announce targets without fixing labour, materials, finance, planning and infrastructure bottlenecks, homes will not arrive. The response is not to abandon public investment; it is to structure it around direct delivery, public land, enforceable affordability covenants, transparent procurement and independently monitored supply targets.
A second objection is that rent regulation can reduce rental supply.
Economic evidence is mixed because “rent control” covers very different policies, ranging from strict vacancy controls to moderate limits on rent increases within tenancies. Poorly designed controls can discourage investment, reduce maintenance or cause landlords to exit particular market segments. The appropriate response is carefully designed renter protection: predictable, evidence-based limits on excessive rent rises, exemptions or tailored treatment for new construction where justified, stronger minimum standards, and parallel investment in social and affordable supply. Renters need protection from displacement, but no single regulatory tool can substitute for building homes.
A third objection is that social housing creates concentrated disadvantage or poor-quality estates.
History supports part of this concern: some public housing programs have been underfunded, spatially segregated and poorly maintained. The lesson is not to avoid social housing but to avoid residualised, segregated housing policy. New supply should be mixed in type and location, accessible, energy efficient, close to services, and accompanied by tenant choice, maintenance funding and community facilities. Vienna’s long-lived mixed social-housing model is more instructive than failed estate-management approaches.
A fourth objection is that changing negative gearing or capital-gains-tax treatment would hurt “mum-and-dad investors,” tenants or retirement savings.
Any transition must be fair, prospective and carefully costed. Yet the existing system is not neutral, and Treasury acknowledges that the CGT discount gives concessional treatment to capital gains compared with other income. Reform can grandfather existing investments, limit new concessions to newly built dwellings, or cap benefits, while redirecting revenue toward affordable supply. The aim is to rebalance incentives, not punish ordinary households.
A fifth objection is constitutional and practical: housing is largely a state responsibility, so federal promises are performative.
It is true that states control much of planning, tenancy law and public housing. But the Commonwealth has powerful levers through finance, tax, income support, national agreements and infrastructure. The National Housing Accord itself demonstrates that coordinated national action is possible. The better approach is cooperative federalism with legislated outcomes, stable funding and public accountability – not centralisation for its own sake.
Finally, evidence has limits.
Census homelessness data are periodic and underestimate hidden homelessness. Housing-completion forecasts change with macroeconomic conditions. International examples are instructive but context-dependent. The dossier should therefore be updated annually, distinguish facts from projections, and publish transparent methods for every target and costing.
Part 04
The Australian Design
How Housing would work in Australia
A national guarantee, delivered locally
Commonwealth leadership, state delivery, First Nations control and public accountability.
WeRise would establish a National Housing Guarantee: a ten-year intergovernmental program to ensure every person can access safe, secure, appropriate and affordable housing. It would be a framework of rights, targets, funding, institutions and reporting – not a promise that the Commonwealth can construct every home itself.
The Commonwealth should lead where it has unique power: housing finance, tax, income support, national targets, national data, infrastructure incentives, competition policy and the regulation of financial-system risk. States and territories should lead public and community housing delivery, planning reform, tenancy law, land assembly and local service coordination. Local governments should be resourced to plan for growth, community facilities, active transport, public space and local infrastructure. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander housing must be designed and delivered with Aboriginal Community Controlled Housing Organisations, not imposed through generic programs.
Australia already has core national institutions. Housing Australia administers the HAFFF and National Housing Accord Facility. The HAFF has a $10 billion capital base, while the Accord seeks 1.2 million well-located homes by June 2029.8 The Commonwealth committed to 40,000 social and affordable homes by mid-2029 through HAFF-related funding and concessional finance; Housing Australia reported $14 billion in 2024–25 commitments supporting 18,650 dwellings.9 These should be retained and expanded into a predictable, rolling pipeline.
The first design priority is a legislated social and affordable housing target, separately reported from market dwelling approvals. A dwelling cannot count simply because it is newly built: it must meet defined affordability, accessibility, energy-efficiency, location and tenure-security standards. Public subsidy should secure public value for decades through perpetual affordability covenants, public or community ownership, and transparent eligibility rules.
The second is a national Housing First and prevention guarantee. People leaving prison, hospital, out-of-home care, family violence, defence service or immigration detention should not be discharged into homelessness. States should create prevention duties that require relevant agencies to intervene early, while the Commonwealth funds dedicated housing supply and support packages. The Census count of 122,494 people experiencing homelessness demonstrates why a crisis-only approach is unacceptable.3
The third is a renters’ security compact: nationally agreed minimum rental standards, effective enforcement, transparent rent data, limits on arbitrary eviction and rent increases, and stronger tenancy advocacy. Details must respect state legal responsibility, but national funding can be conditional on meaningful protections and data publication.
The fourth is an integrated delivery plan: public land banking, inclusionary zoning where appropriate, land-value capture around transport investment, planning capacity grants, infrastructure sequencing, modern methods of construction, workforce training, adaptive reuse and stronger building-quality regulation. The target should be reviewed annually by NHSAC, with a public corrective-action process whenever completions or affordability indicators fall behind.
A realistic timeline is immediate legislative and funding action in year one; land, procurement and workforce mobilisation in years one to two; significant construction acceleration from years two to five; and a sustained ten-year build-and-renewal program. Housing security is not delivered by one budget. It is built through durable public capacity.
Part 05
People and Transition
Who Housing affects
The housing crisis has a face
Renters, women, young people, First Nations communities and low-income households are carrying the greatest burden.
Housing insecurity reaches across Australia, but the harms are concentrated among people with the least financial buffer. Private renters are exposed to rent rises and short leases; low-income households face impossible trade-offs between rent, food, medicine, energy and transport; and people experiencing domestic and family violence can be unable to leave safely because there is nowhere affordable to go. The problem is also intergenerational: young adults delay independence, form households later, stay in overcrowded homes, move farther from opportunity or carry high housing costs into their working lives.
The ABS estimated that 122,494 people experienced homelessness on Census night in 2021. Of those, 23.0% were aged 12 to 24, and 39.1% were in severely crowded dwellings. []3 []4 Homelessness should not be reduced to rough sleeping. It includes people who are temporarily staying with others because they have no home of their own, living in boarding houses, crisis accommodation, improvised dwellings or unsafe overcrowding.
Case study
A 27-year-old disability-support worker rents a room in outer Brisbane after her share-house rent rises beyond what she can afford. She moves repeatedly to avoid increases, spends more time commuting, and cannot save for a bond or a deposit. She is employed, but employment alone does not give her housing security. A stable, affordable rental near transport would reduce financial stress and help retain an essential worker in the local community.
Case study
A 58-year-old woman leaves a violent relationship after years outside the paid workforce. Her income is limited, rental vacancies are scarce, and she has no family home to return to. She spends weeks in temporary accommodation before finding an insecure rooming arrangement. A Housing First pathway, specialist family-violence housing and sufficient social housing would make safe departure possible before violence becomes chronic homelessness.
Social housing provides a clear counterexample to the idea that only market housing can provide stability. At June 2025, 429,567 households accessed 450,607 social housing dwellings nationally. Nearly all social-housing tenancies were occupied by low-income households, and recorded rental stress was 0.2% in public housing, 0.3% in state-owned and managed Indigenous housing, and 3.7% in community housing. []5 These figures show the protective function of non-market housing, while also revealing how limited the supply is relative to need.
People who may oppose reform include property investors concerned about tax changes, homeowners concerned about property values or neighbourhood change, developers concerned about planning obligations, and some local residents concerned about density, traffic or construction disruption. Their interests and concerns should be taken seriously. But no group’s preference for scarcity can outweigh another person’s need for a safe home. Good policy reduces conflict by building infrastructure with homes, enforcing quality standards, engaging communities early and applying changes fairly rather than retrospectively.
Part 06
Related policies
Housing sits within a wider set of WeRise policies.
- Shelter & Movement: more WeRise policies in this pillar
- WeRise: all 29 policies across seven pillars
Notes
Sources and Supporting Documents
- National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. State of the Housing System 2026. Australian Government. 2026. nhsac.gov.au
- National Housing Supply and Affordability Council. State of the Housing System 2025. Australian Government. 2025. nhsac.gov.au
- Australian Bureau of Statistics. Estimating Homelessness: Census, 2021. Australian Government. 2023. abs.gov.au
- Productivity Commission. Report on Government Services 2026: Housing and Homelessness. Australian Government. 2026. pc.gov.au
- Productivity Commission. Report on Government Services 2026: Housing. Australian Government. 2026. pc.gov.au
- Australian Treasury. Delivering the National Housing Accord. Australian Government. 2024. treasury.gov.au
- Australian Treasury. Homes for Australia: A National Plan. Australian Government. 2026. treasury.gov.au
- Housing Australia. Corporate Plan 2025–26. Australian Government. 2025. housingaustralia.gov.au
- Housing Australia. Improving Housing Outcomes for Australians: Social Bond Report 2024–25. Australian Government. 2025. housingaustralia.gov.au
- Australian Treasury. Capital Gains Tax and Negative Gearing. Australian Government. 2024. treasury.gov.au
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. OECD Toolkit to Combat Homelessness. OECD. 2024. oecd.org
- Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Data on Homelessness and Housing Exclusion 2026: Australia. OECD. 2026. oecd.org
- Scottish Government. Ending Homelessness Together: Annual Report to the Scottish Parliament. Scottish Government. 2025. gov.scot
- Scottish Government. Housing Statistics 2025: Key Trends Summary. Scottish Government. 2026. gov.scot
- City of Vienna. Social Housing in Vienna. City of Vienna. Accessed 2026. socialhousing.wien
- European Commission. Finland: Housing First Model Reduces Migrant Homelessness. European Commission. 2026. home-affairs.ec.europa.eu
- Australian Council of Social Service. Homes for Living, Not Wealth Creation. ACOSS. 2025. acoss.org.au
- Shelter NSW. 2026 Report on Government Services: What the Latest ROGS Data Tells Us About Social Housing and Housing Assistance. Shelter NSW. 2026. shelternsw.org.au
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