Australians everywhere are grappling with a tight housing market, whether trying to find an affordable rental, meet the next mortgage repayment or downsize into a smaller home.<\/p>\n
We heard your stories and experiences, plus put your questions to Tom Alves from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute and Cotality's Gerard Burg.<\/p>\n
Choose what information you see below by using filters<\/p>\n
Thank you to everyone who has submitted their comments and questions \u2014 we had an overwhelming number of people write in!<\/p>\n
We haven't been able to share every comment or get every question answered, but rest assured we've read them all.<\/p>\n
Hearing from you helps us cover the stories that matter to you, and we'll have plenty more to share about housing affordability and rental stress in the near future.<\/p>\n
That's where we'll leave today's blog. Thanks again for being with us.<\/p>\n
If a third of Australians rent, mainly through the private rental market, how do we begin to drop the cost of renting given its gone up so much in the past 5 years?
\nEveryone is so focused on buying a house, but it's hard to save with high rent costs.<\/p>\n
AHURI's Tom Alves has an answer for Lissy's question.<\/p>\n
The growth in the number of households who are renting, and likely to continue renting long term (whether they want to or not), is one of the big housing policy challenges today.<\/p>\n
In the past, governments tackled this problem by becoming providers of affordable rental housing themselves. The function of public housing has changed a lot since then, but new investment in community housing can help. The current challenge is providing social housing at scale and funding it sustainably.<\/p>\n
A 2026 AHURI study established there had been minimal growth in social housing stock in Australia over the past three decades and the percentage of Australian households living in social housing fell from 4.9% in 1981, to 3.8% in 2021, leaving more people reliant on the private market.<\/p>\n
With the previous National Rental Affordability Scheme now all but wound up, another current focus is on how the private sector can help deliver new affordable rental products. Sometimes called key worker housing, these projects or properties offer a discounted market rent to eligible households.<\/p>\n
There are several government initiatives currently designed to boost both social and affordable housing supply, including\u00a0the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund\u00a0which aims\u00a0to produce\u00a020,000 new social homes and 20,000 new affordable homes over five years.<\/p>\n
The $2 billion Social Housing Accelerator fund announced in June 2023 meanwhile aims to provide 4,000 new, refurbished, and acquired social housing dwellings across the country.<\/p>\n