Improving access to social housing: paradigms, principles and reforms

• Kath Hulse, Rhonda Phillips, Terry Burke
• Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute

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12 April 2007Social housing in Australia is under pressure. Put simply, demand remains high, whilst the annual supply of vacant homes available to allocate to households has declined markedly over the last fifteen years. States and territories, which currently provide more than nine in ten dwellings in the sector, have responded in a number of ways. They have rationed access to existing social housing to households with the most urgent and complex needs. They are attempting to draw in additional resources from the not-for-profit and private sectors in developing a more diverse social housing sector with an increasing range of providers, delivering a greater range of products and services. This inevitably raises questions about how well traditional administrative applications/allocations systems work and what options are available that may deliver better outcomes for households, providers and the sector overall (Chapter 1).

In this Final Report, we examine in detail some options to improve access to social housing within three separate but interrelated policy paradigms. Firstly, we consider reforms within a welfare service delivery paradigm which inter alia aim at achieving greater integration of services. In particular, we examine ‘common housing registers’ which try to achieve more coordination and better integration in access to social housing. Secondly, we investigate options within a paradigm of consumer choice which aim at enabling households to have more choice and control of decisions about their housing, most notably ‘choice-based lettings’. Thirdly, we examine options within a paradigm of sustainable communities, aimed at improving place management, in particular, local allocations policies (Chapter 2).