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Soaring dwelling affordability has led to social housing becoming a dominant topic of conversation around the country.
A new report filed by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) has shone a light on the state of social housing in this country, reflecting both on if it meets the needs of its citizens and how Australia stacks up when compared to other countries.
In 1981 the number of Australians living in social housing equated to 4.9 per cent of the total population, with 228,938 of the 4,668,906 households labelled as social housing. By comparison, the latest census data found that this number has reduced to 3.8 per cent, with 351,017 out of 9,275,271 households considered social.
Australia’s comparisons to nations with a similar cultural make-up to it – New Zealand, England, Canada, and the US – provided mixed results.
For example, nations such as Canada, where 4.2 per cent of all households live in social housing and New Zealand, where it is estimated that 4 per cent of the population do the same, only slightly bettering Australia’s performance.
On the other hand, the latest data from England (2018) highlighted that 17 per cent of the population, or 3.9 million people, live in social housing, which is a larger commitment and contribution to that of Australia.
The only country Australia outperforms is the US, where just 0.98 per cent of all households live in public housing, which equates to 1.2 million households.
Further analysis conducted by the AHURI, this time pitting Australia against 17 members of the European Union (EU), found that Australian social housing falls well short of the EU’s median of 6 per cent.
Additionally, Australia lagged behind countries with similar gross domestic products (GDPs), most notably Sweden and the Netherlands. Despite Sweden ($60,238.99) and the Netherlands’ ($58,061.00) GDPs per capita sitting approximately $300 more than and $1,900 less than Australia’s respectively, both Europeans had levels of social housing that were 4.5 times (Sweden) and 7.6 times (the Netherlands) greater than Australia’s.
The report concluded that despite Australia performing strongly on social housing initiatives when compared to countries like Canada, there remains an overall lack of supply to meet demand. The AHURI calculated that 6.1 per cent, or 564,864 national households, are living or had requested to live in social housing, a number that far exceeds current levels.
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