Problem

Across New South Wales, demand for social and crisis housing is growing faster than supply. Growth in maintenance costs for the existing housing stock is also constricting available Commonwealth and state investment for new houses.

The past decade has seen a 37% increase in unmet priority social housing demand and a 70% increase in homelessness across New South Wales.

The 2019 Australian Infrastructure Audit identified that the social housing system in Australia is under pressure. There is a lack of funding, high maintenance costs from an ageing housing stock and increasing demand.

Without intervention, this issue is expected to worsen. Unmet demand for Aboriginal housing alone is expected to result in an undersupply of more than 12,500 homes by 2031.

This initiative relates to the national High Priority Initiative for Remote housing overcrowding, which was added to the Infrastructure Priority List in February 2019.

Proposed initiative

This initiative is for increasing the availability of social housing in New South Wales.

Growing the availability of housing is likely to involve a range of actions, including:

• addressing maintenance deficiencies for existing housing stock
• renewing life-expired housing stock
• developing new housing stock.

There is an opportunity to generate efficiencies by considering issues in supplying social and crisis housing for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people together with other populations.

Next steps

Proponent to identify initiatives and develop options (Stage 2 of Infrastructure Australia’s Assessment Framework).