Improving access to social housing: ideas for reform

For 60 years, the public housing sector has had a dominant role in the Australian social housing system, and most households wanting to access the system have had a single point of entry via the public housing agency in each state or territory. Each has its own application and allocations policies and practices to determine who gets access to its housing, in what order, and what type and size of housing is offered to households. Whilst nine in ten social housing dwellings are still owned and managed by state or territory public housing agencies, the number is slowly declining, and it appears that any growth in the social housing system will not be in public housing but rather in community housing, including new models of 'affordable housing', and accommodation for Indigenous people (Milligan et al. 2004). As social housing in Australia moves towards a more explicit multi-provider system, issues and challenges arise regarding improving access, including information and choice for households, efficiency for providers and the overall development of the social housing system.