Glossary

The purpose of this glossary is to define terms commonly used in our research as well as in housing, homelessness, urban and cities policy. It is a useful reference to help you familiarise you with housing-specific terms used across our publications and on our website.

This glossary is limited to terms and acronyms most used by Australian academics and governments.

If there is a term you would like to see included in the AHURI Glossary, please contact us at information@ahuri.edu.au.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I

Inclusionary zoning

A land use planning intervention by government designed to deliver affordable housing. It either mandates or creates incentives for a residential development to provide a specified proportion or number of affordable housing dwellings.

Income quintiles

A comparison measurement approach whereby a household’s income is ranked against the distribution of all household income in Australia. The approach divides Australia’s households (i.e. not population) into five equal groups or quintiles, each comprising 20 per cent of the number of all households, based on their income. The income quintiles assessment leads to the recognition of the following categories:

very low income households – 0% to 20% of income earners
low income households – 20% to 40% of income earners
moderate income households – 40% to 60% of income earners
high income households – 60% to 80% of income earners
very high income households – highest 20% of income earners.

Income support

A regular payment from government that helps individuals and households with living costs. Income support includes the Age Pension, Austudy, Carer Payment, Disability Support Pension, JobSeeker Payment, Parenting Payment, Special Benefit, Farm Household Allowance, Youth Allowance, Partner Allowance, Widow Allowance, Service Pension and Veteran Payment

Income unit

Used for computed Commonwealth Rent Assistance, an income unit is one person or a group of related persons within a household, whose command over income is shared, or any person living in a non-private dwelling who is in receipt of personal income.

Indirect housing assistance

Government policies and programs that, whilst not directly focussed on housing supply or demand, do impact on the housing system (e.g. tax policies that exempt housing from certain taxes, such as home ownership is exempted from the capital gains tax).

Also see direct housing assistance

Infill

An urban planning term describing the development of higher-density housing within established urban areas. Typically, infill involves increasing residential densities in previously occupied with low- to medium-density housing or vacant land. In Australia, infill targets have been set for housing in all capital cities in an attempt to direct population and investment closer to employment and commercial centres and transport nodes.