To move people in the bottom-income quintile out of housing stress in Sydney, more than 7,000 social housing dwellings need to be built each year for the next two decades.
According to Dr Laurence Troy, ‘Around a third of this is just to maintain the (existing) share, which we are not currently doing.’
Dr Troy, who is Research Fellow/Lecturer, City Futures Research Centre at the University of New South Wales, says ‘the bottom quintile households we identify would (almost) all be eligible for social housing under the current system.
‘If we put this next to current housing targets of 30,000 per year, around 20% of all housing growth would need to be social housing.
Speaking about AHURI’s just-completed report on social housing as infrastructure, Dr Troy’s team have quantified social housing needs across Australia according to ABS’s SA4 (Statistical Area Level).
The figures suggested are based on existing residents, so AHURI’s estimates are not premised on ‘some grand social redistribution across Sydney’, says Dr Troy.
The report costs-out delivery of such a program, based on a not-for-profit model, but with different subsidy arrangements. ‘The cheapest way to fund this, from a government point of view, is to provide capital grant funding,’ Dr Troy says.
For the short version of AHURI’s report, go to:
For the full version, go to:
