The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NSAC) has held its first meeting as a new permanent housing body.
Meeting in Canberra on Friday, the council heard from representatives of the construction and housing industry, social services and local councils.
The council is tasked with advising on the government’s 10-year National Housing and Homelessness Plan. The interim NSAC has already been busy writing inquiry submissions and reports.
Among their specific recommendations for dealing with the housing crisis are encouraging more institutional investors to build and manage rental properties, reviewing planning laws and standardising definitions and metrics across the country.
“Secure and fit-for-purpose rental housing is an issue experienced by renters across all states and territories,” they wrote.
“Social and affordable housing is essential infrastructure for fostering inclusive, diverse and productive communities, and decades of underinvestment in social and affordable housing has left the country with a significant shortfall.
“Funding the adequate provision of this infrastructure is a shared responsibility of all levels of government that requires better coordination.”
Today’s meeting comes just a few weeks after the opening of the first round of funding for social and affordable homes under the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) and the National Housing Accord.
HAFF, the flagship program of the Housing and Homelessness Plan, will invest the proceeds of a $10 billion investment in social and affordable housing programs.
The need for intervention in the housing market was made clear by the latest State of the Nation’s Housing Report, which identified 377,600 households in housing need, 208,200 households under highly acute rental stress and 577,400 households under less acute rental pressure.
Housing minister Julia Collins is already chalking up a win on the expanded Home Guarantee Scheme. One in three homebuyers since May 2022 have accessed the scheme to subsidise their deposit.
Collins said the scheme has helped 100,000 Australians move into their own homes.
“For those Australians that are renting that could probably service a mortgage but don’t have enough for a deposit, they can get into home ownership with as little as 5% deposit and the federal government guarantees the other 15, which means they save thousands of dollars on lenders mortgage insurance,” she said.
“Now this scheme has been expanded by the federal government with the Regional First Home Buyer Guarantee and, of course, the changes we made to widen the availability and the eligibility of who can actually be helped through the scheme.
“We have income thresholds and purchase limits because we are targeting it in a way that doesn’t add to increasing prices when it comes to the housing market.”
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