Lessons of defence housing Australia for affordable housing provision

Summary

Encouraging private investment in affordable housing Australia has been recognised as a major challenge by researchers and policy makers for some time and has generated considerable work on possible models. This project will determine the potential lessons of the Defence Housing Authority model of rental housing supply and management for affordable housing provision.


Project Number: 70575
Research Theme: Housing_Affordability
Project Leader: Phibbs, Peter
Funding Year: 2009
Research Centre: UNSW-UWS

Description

This proposal responds to a direct and highly practical question in the AHURI research agenda (Theme 4: Affordable Housing) to determine the potential lessons of the Defence Housing Authority model of rental housing supply and management for affordable housing provision.
To address this aim, the study will consider the following specific research questions:
  1. What are the characteristics of the rental housing investment and business models operated by the DHA and how have these developed and performed across market cycles?
  2. What benchmarks can be established for key performance areas including returns to investors and asset and tenancy management?
  3. What implications can be drawn from the DHA model for the emerging affordable rental housing sector?
The methodology for the study will be centred on a two level review of relevant documents pertaining to the DHA’s strategies, operations and performance of potential relevance to the emerging affordable housing industry in Australia. In the first review all potentially useful information will be identified and the content appraised to provide an overview of the model.  This information will be collated by content area and presented to a reference group of industry representatives who will be asked to advice on useful areas for closer examination. The second stage review will drill down into the selected areas of interest using document analysis and DHA staff interviews.