It is no secret that housing is expensive in Australia. Buying a house is hard, being a renter has many of its own problems and a shocking number of people do not have a secure place to call home at all.

While these issues are prominent in Australia, discussion of alternatives is narrow. It is almost as if there is no way of housing people other than private ownership and private rental. Homelessness is treated as unavoidable at best, or the fault of the homeless at worst. Public housing gets an occasional mention before more money is thrown at discredited policies that ultimately benefit private owners and investors. This situation seems all-the-more unavoidable when we look for alternatives in the Anglosphere but find most of the same problems.

This report brings together three essays from writers with knowledge of Australian and Nordic social policy, with a focus on housing and homelessness.