Canberra's community services sector has called, for the third consecutive year, for fund to immediately boost the city's public and community housing stock to help the thousands of residents at or below the bread line.

While ACT Council of Social Services' Susan Helyer acknowledged Housing Minister Yvette Berry's recent pledge to add 240 more units to the stock, she said it was not enough to help the 37,000-odd Canberrans struggling to pay rent.

"They've said they'll create hundreds of new dwellings to add to the affordable housing market, but we need thousands," she said.

"I think they've recognised the need and the gap [in affordable housing], but what we need them to do is also recognise the importance of actually putting substantial public money into this problem."

For the past three years, the council has called for the $100 million housing fund, a joint effort by the numerous community sector groups to find consensus on a single budget request that would have the widest positive effects.

But that call has so far been ignored, in favour of a housing summit Ms Helyer characterised as "disappointing", policy reviews and smaller one-off pledges like a $1 million housing "innovation fund".

Ms Helyer said there was a need across the community not just for more crisis accommodation, but also secure long-term affordable rental properties that would remain in community or government hands, rather than being sold off a few years later.

"We need this housing for people who will never have enough income for the purchase market, because if they have security of tenure, then they can get educated, attend to their healthcare and get a job, rather than spending their time forever looking for their next rental," she said.

But a government spokesman said housing was a priority and the ACT's public housing waiting lists were "the lowest of all jurisdictions as a proportion of total stock" at 18 per cent compared to the 46 per cent national average".

He also said 97 per cent of new public housing 'allocations' were made to the households in greatest need and the rate of ACT people receiving supported accommodation services was triple the national rate, claiming it showed more people were getting help.

While Ms Helyer acknowledged the work done, and the "value of strategic analysis" as part of the policy reviews, she said it was "not enough to tinker around the edges when we need the courage to invest substantially in regulatory reform and in funding".

"We're seeing a gap that is in the thousands of dwellings, not the hundreds, and we also need more diversity of dwelling and we need a response that is at scale to that gap," she said.

Families ACT executive officer Will Mollison, who represents a range of crisis and longer term services helping families and children, said housing was now "the biggest issue facing the community".

He said the community sector built a consensus around the fund proposal about three years ago, and a lack of action on the fund meant there was "a degree of frustration that things have been moving so slowly".

"We all had a think about what would make the difference to all our clients and we agreed this was the one thing that could make the biggest difference in our community," he said.

"It's a complex problem and it needs a partnership between the community, industry and government, but it needs government to make it happen.

"Why it's not being taken as seriously as we'd like, I just don't know."

The government spokesman said that budget allocations for 2018-19 were a matter for Cabinet, and that ensuring all Canberrans had a place to call home had "long been a priority for the ACT government".

He said the government was currently reviewing the feedback on its housing strategy, but would not detail when the final strategy would be publicly released, or when any targets it set would be implemented.