Premier Daniel Andrews will pledge on Wednesday to build the new dwellings mostly in Melbourne and Geelong, with some in Ballarat, by 2022 and at a cost of $209 million if Labor is successful at the November 24 state election.

The promised homes are to be fully government built, owned and operated, in a return to the traditional model of providing state-owned housing.

The new building program is separate to Labor’s controversial public-private housing renewal program, which the Premier says is replacing up to 2500 old public housing properties with modern accommodation.

Labor says its new policy is about tackling some of the most acute cases on the state’s lengthy housing waiting lists, women and children fleeing domestic violence and people living on the streets.

The pledge includes 800 one- and two-bedroom homes and 200 three-bedroom properties, which the government says will put roofs over the heads of up to 1800 Victorians around the state who are most in need of safe accommodation.

The new properties will be built on land the state already owns in Geelong and Ballarat, as well as the Darebin, Maribyrnong, Stonnington and Whitehorse council areas in Melbourne’s suburbs.

But the state government’s own estimates say that about 1700 more dwellings will be needed each year over the next two decades to maintain social housing at its current 3.5 per cent share of Victoria’s housing mix.

The same report, commissioned in the wake of the state’s royal commission on family violence, estimated double that amount of social housing would be needed to provide affordable housing to the families struggling in the tough private rental market.

The state had total of 86,000 social housing properties in 2016, about three-quarters of which were public housing units with 23 per cent in the community sector and 2 per cent Aboriginal community housing.

But a Parliamentary inquiry in June found that more than 80,000 Victorians, including nearly 25,000 children, were waiting for social housing.

Mr Andrews, who will announce the policy with his Housing Minister Martin Foley , said the new units would be aimed squarely at accommodating survivors of family violence and getting people off the streets.

“No one should be forced to stay in a violent relationship because they have nowhere else to go, these new public housing properties will help women and kids find a home and start a new life, safe from family violence,” the Premier aid.

“Getting a job or studying is near impossible if you’re living on the street – we're building more public housing to make sure Victorians get the opportunity to build a new life.”

RMIT planning expert Libby Porter is a critic of the Andrews government's privatisation plans for public housing that would see public land sold to developers to build both private and social housing on the estates.

Professor Porter said she welcomed more public housing being built, but that it was "curious" the promise came in the middle of the government’s renewal program with the private sector.

"It's curious that in the middle of the public housing renewal program, and all the trauma and stress that selling public land has caused, that all of a sudden we can figure out how to do 1000 new units,” she said.