Housing offers much more than just shelter. It provides space for raising families, for leisure and rest, and increasingly, it doubles as a workspace. Housing also impacts our mental and physical health due to factors including cold, mould, poorly managed maintenance issues, unaffordability, and inequality.

For all its importance, we know surprisingly little about the homes Australians live in, beyond sales prices, construction materials and population averages. In 2022, the Australian Research Council (ARC), acknowledging this data gap, funded a collaboration of universities to develop a multi-year national housing data infrastructure. The data contained in this infrastructure gives a view ‘behind the front door’ of 22,500 Australian homes across tenure, income and all Australian States and Territories.

This collection of essays provides a valuable and broad view of housing in contemporary Australia.