Andrea Sharam

Andrea is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Property, Construction and Project Management at RMIT University where she specialises in research on social and affordable housing, including new market-based housing models that promote housing affordability, apartment development and non-profit property. Andrea is a leading scholar in the area of social housing asset management and her work developing a specialist asset management manual for social housing providers in Australia and New Zealand has received multiple awards. 

Her highly innovative conceptual and theoretical work on housing markets utilises the economic theory of matching markets (the economics underlying much of the digital transformation of the economy), and is a significant scholarly, public policy and practical contribution. 

Prior to becoming an academic Andrea worked for the Community Housing Federation of Victoria and before that, WISHIN, a women’s homelessness service. Her 2008 study on hidden homelessness amongst midlife single women predicted there would be a ‘tsunami’ of women seeking housing assistance and this and her other related studies brought the issue of single older women as a cohort at risk of homelessness later in life to national attention.