Public investment will add tens of thousands of new social housing dwellings by 2030, reversing decades of decline. But new research shows the increase will only prevent further erosion of the sector, not reduce unmet need.

Thanks to an unprecedented lift in public funding in the 2020s, an extra 55,000 new, good quality homes around Australia will be available to people on the lowest incomes by 2030. That’s almost triple the increase of 20,000 homes in the previous decade.

Residents in these modern “ social” homes will generally pay only 25 per cent of their income in rent. Social housing refers to government-subsidised homes, with below market rents.

You’d think federal and state politicians would be shouting about an extra 55,000 social homes by 2030 from those new rooftops.

But, surprisingly, there are no official projections on how many more total dwellings we’ll have in coming years, thanks to recently boosted investment.

For the first time, our  new research fills this gap. It shows that even with the recent investment boom, we’re still not building enough to cut the backlog of need – leaving hundreds of thousands of Australians without an adequate, affordable home.

Up until now, we’ve known how many  social homes Australia has at the end of each year. Remarkably, though, there is still no national data series tracking social housing in greater detail: showing the balance between annual construction, acquisitions and losses.

Filling this gap,  our new........

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