Australia has a long legacy of direct provision of housing to those in need, in the form of public housing. The Commonwealth-State Housing Agreements, which operated from 1945 to 2008 provided a framework whereby the Commonwealth provided financial support for the States to provide public housing. However, shifts in political and economic thinking since the 1980s has changed this paradigm, with a greater reliance on the not-for-profit and private sectors to provide low-cost housing to those in need. This has been achieved partly through a mixture of subsidies and tax concessions.