Glossary

The process whereby a property investor can deduct their property expenses (e.g. the interest on the loan required to buy the property, depreciation costs, land taxes, rates and maintenance costs) from both the income they receive as rent from the property and from other sources of income (e.g. their salary or other non-housing investments), thereby reducing their overall tax liability. The actual purchase cost of the property is not claimable for negative gearing purposes.

Newstart was a Commonwealth Government income support payment for people looking for work or who were unable to do usual work or study while they recovered from a temporary sickness or injury. On 20 March 2020 Newstart was replaced with JobSeeker Payment.

See income support

Non-shelter outcomes (sometimes also non-housing outcomes) refers to householders’ physical and mental health, education, labour market outcomes, crime and safety, community participation and social cohesion, locational dis/advantage and child development. Non-shelter outcomes for households may be improved by receiving housing assistance and other welfare benefits.

A temporary, medium or long-term living arrangement for children and young people who cannot live in their family home. Housing can be in:

• Foster care: a child is taken into care by a foster carer who has been trained and approved to look after children.
• Kinship care: a child is taken into care by a relative or family friend allowing them to remain within the family or local network.
• Permanent care: a child is placed into the care of a permanent carer (including foster or kinship carers where it is intended the child will remain in their care until age 18 or beyond) prior to a Permanent Care Order being made by the Children's Court.
• Residential care: a young person is placed into a home staffed by carers.

See crowding

See tenure types

Owner-purchaser (or purchaser-owner) includes homeowners who are still paying for their home through a mortgage and those homeowners who own their home outright.

A professional planning practice that aims to make urban spaces more liveable for local people by taking into account inputs of the people who will be using the public space most. Placemaking often occurs as part of an urban renewal process focusing on urban design and involving community consultation.

‘Precarious housing’ is defined as housing that concurrently exhibits two or more of the characteristics identified below: unaffordable, unsuitable and insecure.

An urban planning term designating an urban area for a specific purpose to enable knowledge spillover and foster investment. Australian examples include education, cultural, health and innovation precincts.

Priority allocation is a principle of the social housing allocation process whereby people with extreme housing needs (such as experiencing homelessness or escaping domestic violence) are given quicker access to forms of social housing than might otherwise be the case.

Assistance provided by Commonwealth, state and territory or other welfare agencies to help households access rental housing in the private sector. Assistance can range from programs to educate tenants about how to access and maintain a tenancy, to financial assistance with rental bonds to rent subsidies for defined time periods.

See tenure type

The overall group of rental dwellings provided by non-government investors such as individuals, for profit businesses and market rate dwellings provided not-for-profit housing providers. These dwellings are provided by their owners in the expectation of a commercial profit.

Housing, other than employee housing, that is owned and managed by government directly. Also see community housing

Cooperative arrangements whereby governments work with businesses to develop, fund, build or deliver infrastructure, usually over a long timeframe. The intention is that PPPs reduce upfront costs to governments while providing infrastructure that benefits the wider community.

See dwelling type

A service response for people experiencing homelessness. The aim is to obtain housing immediately and provide tenants with support services to address their needs and enable them to sustain their tenancy.

See homelessness

An investment entity that bundles together investors’ contributions so as to invest in a number of rental dwellings. In Australia, REITs are one type of the larger category of Managed Investment Trusts (MITs) and are used in the commercial property sector but not in the residential sector. MITS are expected to have a ‘passive, pass-through character’ in their investments, for example in commercial properties they rely on rents to make a profit rather than through expecting capital gains on buying and selling properties (which is more prevalent in the private rental sector).

Housing which contains one or more people who identify as being of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander origin and experience great difficulty accessing the services they need and the products they wish to purchase. Remoteness refers to being located at a distance from a specified or significant point of reference. As such it has both quantitative and qualitative meanings. Quantitatively, the Accessibility/ Remoteness Index of Australia Plus (ARIA+) measures remoteness in terms of a community’s distance along a road network from each of five categories/sizes of service centres. Qualitatively it can refer to the perception of isolation in relation to family and to cultural experiences and expectations.