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After a much-delayed announcement, funding for the initial pipeline of projects in the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) has been greenlit.
Housing Australia has selected an initial pipeline of 185 projects that will create 13,700 social and affordable homes across the country through the first funding round of the federal government’s HAFF and National Housing Accord Facility (NHAF).
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These preferred projects will deliver over 4,200 social and affordable homes across every state and territory and will include 1,267 homes for “women and children escaping domestic violence and older women at risk of homelessness”.
The projects within funding round one will also support investment of up to $9.2 billion in social and affordable housing, according to the Albanese government.
Beyond the initial round, the greater pipeline is also expected to deliver “more than one-third of the program’s five-year target of 40,000 social and affordable homes”, with applications for round two opening in the next six months.
Speaking on Monday (16 September) about the approval, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said that he “grew up in social housing” and knows “how important a roof over your head is and the opportunities it creates”.
“The first round of funding under our Housing Australia Future Fund will deliver thousands of social and affordable homes across Australia for those who need it most,” Prime Minister Albanese said.
Minister for Housing and Homelessness Clare O’Neil said that with this announcement, the government was making good on its promise to build “homes for renters, homes for first-home buyers, and homes for women and children escaping domestic violence and those at risk from homelessness, because more homes means more affordable housing for everyone”.
“We want to reduce the stress of housing for Australians – the long waits on housing lists, the long queues for rentals, the out of reach deposit for first home buyers – we’ll reduce these issues if we build more houses, and that’s what these projects do,” Minister O’Neil said.
This sentiment was echoed by the Property Council of Australia, which described the announcement as marking “an important milestone in the delivery of much-needed social and affordable housing”.
“A wealthy, land rich nation should not have a housing deficit and the only way to close that gap is to build more homes. Today’s announcement is great news for housing supply in general,” said Property Council’s group executive of policy and advocacy Matthew Kandelaars.
With funding for the first round of applications originally set to be announced in July 2024, the CEO of the Urban Taskforce Australia, Tom Forrest, previously flagged concern over delays in the program, saying that uncertainty around funding “put the success of the scheme in jeopardy”.
Responding to the announcement, the CEO said it was “the biggest Government investment in social and affordable housing in decades”.
And while the Urban Taskforce supports the HAFF, Forrest also emphasised the need for action at a state level to ensure that the funding is “not just cannibalising housing that otherwise would have been directed towards market price sales”.
“The HAFF effectively covers the gap between market rent and affordable housing rent for 25 years, but it does not, in and of its own, contribute significantly to housing stock more generally,” Forrest said.
“If governments focus their efforts exclusively on delivering ‘affordable housing and social housing’ while ignoring the planning, taxation, feasibility and administrative barriers that face housing supply more generally, they will fail in their quest to increase supply and make housing generally more affordable.”
[Related: Applications open for Housing Australia Future Fund finance]
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