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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 determined 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

Research & Policy Bulletin

Issue 147: Lessons of Defence Housing Australia for affordable housing provision

Defence Housing Australia (DHA) operates a successful model of large scale private investment in provision of rental housing. Its innovative sales and leaseback program might be adapted to expand affordable housing in Australia but only if there was a government guarantee to offset vacancy and arrears risks. This Research and Policy Bulletin provides details of the key findings and policy implications from the completed AHURI research project Lessons of Defence Housing Australia for affordable housing provision.

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393 KB PDF Document

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 considered 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 was 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 was identified and the content appraised to provide an overview of the model.  This information was collated by content area and presented to a reference group of industry representatives who was asked to advice on useful areas for closer examination. The second stage review drilled down into the selected areas of interest using document analysis and DHA staff interviews.  

More Information

Final Report: No. 153: Lessons of Defence Housing Australia for affordable housing provision
310 KB PDF Document

Research and Policy Bulletin: Issue 147: Lessons of Defence Housing Australia for affordable housing provision
393 KB PDF Document