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Successful applicants for the first round of funding were supposed to be notified in July.
After its hard-won passage through Parliament in September 2023, the Housing Australia Future Fund began accepting applications for the first round of funding in January 2024. Developer and community housing providers had roughly three months to get their applications in for a share of the financing to be distributed through the Housing Australia Future Fund Facility and National Housing Accord Facility.
Funding for this first round of applications was set to be announced in July 2024, but heading into mid-September, no announcement has yet been made.
Tom Forrest, CEO of the Urban Taskforce Australia, which represents the interests of developers, has said that delays such as this put the success of the scheme – let alone the country’s goal of building the homes it desperately needs – in jeopardy.
“Private developers have teamed up with community housing providers (CHPs) to build and develop affordable housing on sites that are already approved for the construction of market housing,” Forrest noted.
“Developers have, in good faith, set aside market housing supply to make dwellings available through CHPs who receive funding through the HAFF. However, the delays in decision-making from the Commonwealth are now causing serious financial harm to the feasibility of those arrangements,” he said.
He stressed that developers may feel forced to move on from plans to develop the sites as part of the HAFF program if the funding isn’t announced soon.
“These delays are happening at a time when increases in construction costs are rampant. Interest rates on holding costs are high and ongoing planning delays mean that if the federal government doesn’t make a decision on the funding for HAFF projects this month, many projects, particularly in capital cities, will be sold to market housing and not made available for affordable housing through CHPs,” he warned.
According to Urban Taskforce’s information, the applications that are awaiting a decision cumulatively add up to 50,000 homes.
Forrest charged the Prime Minister with dragging the chain on the progress of its signature housing policy going into the last election.
“We are still waiting for action after two-and-a-half years,” he said.
With the housing portfolio changing hands at the end of July, he said it was time for the new Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Clare O’Neil, to “get a hold of Housing Australia and the HAFF, and get the funding for affordable housing rolling”.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Juliet Helmke
Based in Sydney, Juliet Helmke has a broad range of reporting and editorial experience across the areas of business, technology, entertainment and the arts. She was formerly Senior Editor at The New York Observer.
