The Liberals would also abolish the 0.34 per cent levy charged on grants to community groups, which raises between $430,000 and $450,000 a year.

Ms Lawder said the Liberals would give $500,000 to Communities at Work to buy another house. The group own seven houses at the moment, which it rents to women and families living in refuges. Communities at Work deputy chief executive Lee Maiden said the homes are transition accommodation for the women. They can stay up to two years, but are helped and encouraged to leave within the first 12 months into longer-term housing.

Ms Lawder also announced an extra $100,000 funding a year to help the group support families through the "Reach Home" program.

Ms Lawder said the Liberals recognised the demand for short-term emergency accommodation in Canberra. In June 2016, 666 Canberrans were homeless and on a wait list for accommodation. The demand was greatest from single mothers with children, single men and single women.

She also said the Liberals would make it easier for people to run emergency accommodation, for example by re-purposing some vacant office space, and by reducing "red tape".

Ms Lawder, who ran Homelessness Australia before entering politics, cited hurdles in the way of Safe Shelter, a group providing emergency accommodation for men which had been unable to build showers on its site for the men to use.

"I've heard from many organisations that want to provide short-term crisis accommodation only to face restrictive red tape," she said. "The community sector should be able to get on with what it does best."

Ms Maiden said the wait lists for accommodation were "massive", including women who had escaped domestic violence or were homeless and living in refuges while they waited for a house.

She welcomed the promise of a grant for another house. "It would be fantastic," she said. "It would certainly be useful just to be able to help more families."

As for the 0.34 per cent community levy on community groups, Ms Maiden said it was introduced by the government in 2012 and was to be temporary but had been extended for another two years in 2015.

While Communities at Work only received 20 per cent of its funding from government, some community groups were entirely reliant on government funding, and scrapping the levy would make a big difference.

Last year, ACTCOSS criticised the government's decision to extend the levy, saying while it was supposed to pay for reforms to the sector and red-tape reductions, there was not enough evidence it had achieved the purpose.

Community Services Minister Yvette Berry said the government would not extend the levy beyond mid 2017, when it was due to expire.

"The Canberra Liberals have just copied government policy and reframed it as their own," she said. "I have spent much of 2016 working with the community sector around an industry strategy and more specifically on the way in which remaining funds will be spent."

Labor's approach to homelessness was "to maintain the most significant social housing system in Australia with 30 dwellings per 1000 people against a national average of 17 per 1000", she said.

"Last time they were in government the Canberra Liberals sold more than 1000 social housing dwellings and Labor has worked hard in government to recover all that stock."

The safer families package announced in the last budget included $964,000 for a program to help women and children stay home while a partner using or at risk of using violence moves into temporary accommodation and was helped to change their behaviour, she said.