Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) provides supplementary income to about one million income support recipients in the private rental market in recognition of the additional costs of private rental housing. The primary aim of the research reported in this final report is to assess the targeting performance of CRA at a regional level. The premise is...

Commonwealth rent assistance (CRA) entitlement rules - rent thresholds and maximum levels of assistance - are standard across the country, despite the evident variations in regional rent levels. This situation has prompted calls for a regional dimension to be added to CRA payments. How might possible variants of CRA provide a greater responsiveness to regional...

During the past three years NATSEM has developed path-breaking spatial microsimulation techniques, involving the creation of synthetic data about the socioeconomic characteristics of households at a detailed regional level. The data are potentially available at any level of geographic aggregation, down to the level of the Census Collection District (about 200 households).

Centrelink has embarked on a Regional Microsimulation Modelling Project. The modelling work is being undertaken jointly with NATSEM. The purpose of the model under development, the Customer Service Projection (CuSP) Model, is to provide a tool that will assist decision-making through short to medium-term projection of customers and channel use demands at the small area...

Our view of the value of government-provided housing assistance tends to concentrate on the direct impacts of assistance - the impact of a rent subsidy, for example, on a household's housing costs and as an element of government outlays. But housing assistance also has positive effects, for example, on people's education and health, on their...