When parliament returns in March there will be three big, signature policies coming before the parliament and one of those is legislation to establish the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.
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Adding 30,000 new homes to Australia's supply of social and affordable housing sounds like a lot.
Except when it's held up against the current unmet social and affordable housing need which stands at 650,000 homes.
Or the 800,000 households that are about to fall off fixed home loan rates and face painfully higher repayments.
Or the 1 million Australian households forecast to head into housing stress by 2041.
Or when it's broken down on a per capita basis that suggests here in the ACT we'd only get some 540 new social and affordable homes at best against a current shortfall of more than 3100.
The Albanese government deserves to be commended for taking action to address what is an acute and worsening housing crisis.
But that credit can't blind us to the magnitude of the challenge confronting us. And the burning need to do more to address it.
When it comes to the Housing Australia Future Fund, I want to work constructively with the government to lift the ambition about what we can achieve here. I know many of my fellow crossbenchers share the desire to see this fund go further and see policy that gets roofs over peoples' heads faster.
We share concerns that the measures as currently proposed, while a big improvement on what was there previously, don't go anywhere near far enough.
And those concerns are magnified because the crisis we currently face in housing is about to get a whole lot worse.
The looming mortgage cliff is just one factor stoking the fire.
Private market vacancy rates are at all-time lows at around 1 per cent while rental prices are at all-time highs and growing at record rates, with an average national increase of some 18 per cent over the past 12 months.
Adding to the crunch is the return of international students with as many as 40,000 students from China alone reported to return to Australia.
Together with the increase in permanent migration numbers rising from 160,000 to 195,000 places.
In and of themselves these aren't bad things, quite the opposite they're very welcome, but they are also a confluence of extreme pressures on an already deeply stressed housing ecosystem.
The ACT, one of the most affluent electorates in the nation, is also the persistent homelessness capital of the country.
Already one in four women and children fleeing violence are not getting the accommodation support they need and, as The Canberra Times has revealed, the federal government is about to effectively cut $65 million from homelessness services nationally over the next 12 months.
And at the same time as the government seeks to build 30,000 new social and affordable homes over the next five years, over the next three years, the National Rental Affordability Scheme, which was capped at 38,000 social and affordable homes, will be wound up.
While imperfect, the scheme is one way of better utilising existing housing stock to more quickly meet demand while new supply comes online.
And there is clear precedent for governments to do more.
As economist Saul Eslake has pointed out, between 1947 and 1961 the Commonwealth and State Governments directly contributed 221,700, or 24 per cent of the total increase in the housing stock, and a further 299,000 between 1961 and 1976.
The scale of those previous interventions really stand in stark contrast to the policy proposal on the table today.
The federal government's National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation - to be renamed Housing Australia under the current legislative package - has warned that we face a decade-long housing supply crunch.
They are forecasting that by 2024-25, household formation is expected to outpace new housing supply by a cumulative 163,400 dwellings out to 2032.
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That's a lot of homes to be falling short of and this is a crisis that can't wait. It's impacting more and more Australians.
People who were at the frontline of the pandemic response, nurses, teachers, first responder - increasingly they and others in higher income brackets are facing greater housing stress.
Women, in particular older women, are the fastest growing cohort of homeless people in our country, while more and more people are forced to couch surf and resort to other things like house sitting in an attempt to stave off homelessness.
At the heart of this is a question we all need to ask ourselves, especially policymakers, and that is - what is housing? For too long the answer has been a vehicle of wealth creation. And that is understandable. But in these times we need to go back to its purpose as a place of shelter.
Housing is a fundamental human right and an enabler of so many other rights. The right to health, to education, to safety, to economic participation. Without housing, it is incredibly hard to fully realise these other rights.
So when it comes to the policy response to the housing crisis I believe we need to do better and we need to do more.
And I hope when the legislation comes to this Senate, we act together to do just that.
- David Pocock is an independent senator for the ACT.