News

Using a newly available and extremely large Government dataset, researchers have revealed that demand for Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) is far higher than commonly understood, with nearly 2 million households receiving CRA during 2016 rather than the 1.3 million households previously quoted by Government agencies.

As part of the 2020 State Budget, the Victorian Government has announced a large spending commitment of $5.3 billion to build new social housing. The program, called the Big Housing Build (BHB), will construct 12,000 new homes across metropolitan and regional Victoria over a four period, comprising 9,300 social housing homes and 2,900 new affordable and low-cost homes built to help low-to-moderate income earners.

The NSW Government has released a proposal that would give property buyers the choice to either pay a large upfront cost of stamp duty (and ongoing land tax if applicable) or to pay a much smaller annual property tax.

Australian renters have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19 facing income loss, the inability to pay rent, tenure insecurity and eviction risk. Twenty leading thinkers from housing, economics, policy, urban planning, and epidemiology have explored the results from a survey of 15,000 renting households for the publication Rental Insights: A COVID-19 Collection released today.

Suicide Prevention Australia has published a rapid research review undertaken by AHURI and commissioned by the National Suicide Prevention Taskforce on the links between housing related factors and suicide.