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Community housing in Australia is not-for-profit affordable housing provided by over 2500 community housing organisations or Community Housing Providers (CHPs). These have varying modes of operation and structure, and different types of stock. Any budget surplus in CHPs must be used to maintain existing housing, to provide better services for tenants or to help finance new homes. Although independent, the CHPs are regulated by the state, and commonly receive public funding. Most of their stock is owned by public housing authorities in each State.

Community housing providers expanded from the 1990s in Australia, because of inadequate funding for public housing, and because they were better suited than public housing to delivering housing to people with complex needs who require support services.

The Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) is the peak body representing all community housing associations. It provides national advocacy and representation. The State branches of CHIA provide training and networking arrangements for housing and associated service workers.

Overview
Community housing is a diverse sector. The main categories of CHP by purpose are:


 * Community Housing Associations (CHAs). These manage housing for very low income people and are engaged building a portfolio of dwellings where clients can be permanently housed. Some cater to specialised client groups: for example, women’s housing or indigenous housing.
 * Affordable housing organisations. These provide housing at 80% to 90% of market rents to moderate income people. Most of these arose out of the NRAS scheme.
 * Homelessness organisations. These provide temporary or crisis housing for those at risk of homelessness. They mostly maintain a relatively small housing stock, but may be large organisations in terms of budget and employees (for example, Launch Housing is the largest CHP in Victoria). Some are divisions within larger religious charities (for example Baptcare and VincentCare).

Co-operatives, where the tenants conduct most of the management, are an alternative model. They may house either low-income or higher income people.

The community-housing sector has more than tripled in size from 2006, and in 2021 managed 104,000 properties, about 24% of all social housing.<> The tenants are, as with public housing, overwhelmingly recipients of social security benefits, and the majority have complex needs. New South Wales has almost half of all community tenancies.

In 2020-21, CHPs owned real estate assets worth over $7.5 billion, and annually generated over $700 million in rental income.

CHPs administer most crisis housing including housing for family violence. More than half of all indigenous housing is held by CHPs.<:>

In 2022, several CHPs (Southern Cross, Evolve, Bridge and Launch) were operating real estate agencies where interested private landlords could supply housing at below-market rents for longer-term lease to vetted tenants. Demand for lower-priced rentals always far outstrips supply. Other CHPs have a ‘private rental brokerage’ to assist disadvantaged tenants to overcome hurdles that prevent their obtaining a lease.

Governance
In Australia, the term "housing association" refers to larger, growth-oriented 'not-for-dividend' community-housing providers, mostly companies with an unpaid Board. Smaller CHPs may have trust or cooperative structures.

CHPs are strongly regulated to protect tenants, to safeguard public funds and to ensure they remain solvent.

Meeting stringent governance requirements requires a significant effort in larger associations, with hundreds of program requirements to be met. These restrictions limit active management of the stock, as almost all properties are held under covenants from public housing authorities and cannot be sold.

Operations
Operating a sizeable CHO is a complex tightrope act against all sorts of unknown exigencies, and requires constant risk assessment against numerous opportunities.

Funding
CHPs break close to even on renting their stock (compared with public housing, which makes a substantial loss). As a result, there is no surplus for further acquisitions, and acquisitions come mostly from the largesse of governments, in the form of transfers or grants. Side operations such as Transitional housing and NRAS have provided a surplus which may be used for modest acquisition. Partnerships with local government or charities may provide land, so that only the cost of building has to be found.

The larger CHPs have been able to borrow an extra 25% of funding against their equity, though meeting interest payments is difficult without rental surplus. The

Acquisition
Because of the huge shortage of affordable rental properties and the underlying demand, CHPs have sought affordable properties whenever and wherever they can access them.

About 20% of new projects include partnerships with for-profit builders, who may include a proportion of affordable housing in larger projects in order to get various planning benefits. These dwellings are managed by a CHP partner.

Rent-setting
Rents are typically set at 30% of household income plus CRA, which is about break even against recurrent property and tenancy costs plus corporate overhead.

Tenancies
Tenants of the CHOs are among the most disadvantaged people in the community. The tenants are normally recommended by service agencies or through homelessness services. They Various dwellings may be reserved for specific purposes under the terms of their original funding (for example, family violence, prisons, and substance rehabilitation).

Maintenance
The CHPs usually maintain a centralised call centre for dealing with maintenance requests. For properties owned by the government, requests are fielded to the maintenance arm of the. For self-owned properties, requests are forwarded to preferred subcontractors in each region, in much the same way as commercial property managers.

A few CHPs such as Southern Cross Housing have their own maintenance and upgrading divisions.

Social Services
CHPs may provide evaluation and referral for tenants, but the property and tenancy management bodies are not involved in direct provision of social services. Those CHPs with homelessness offices evaluate people in housing difficulty and recommend them for various forms of assistance, which may include cash or temporary accommodation. The clients that pass into Transitional Housing are entitled to some months of appropriate counselling services. Many clients are recommended by social service agencies and remain in the care of the referring body.

Some of the CHPs with a strong homelessness focus, like Launch, run Foyers to give young people a safe place to live while studying. They may have an assertive outreach presence, attending known sites where homeless people sleep.

Communities assistance
Larger CHPs with substantial holdings in a particular area often run community building activities, including sporting team support, scholarships etc. They may also assist tenants to gain access to employment and education opportunities.

Monitoring
The CHPs in most States provide unit record data to the AIHW and to the Productivity Commission, both of whom produce regular reports

History
Demand for public housing from eligible groups accelerated throughout the 1980s, and public housing waiting lists extended to the point that only the highest-priority clients could be accommodated. In 1987, non-aged single people and people who needed support services to live independently became eligible for public housing for the first time, further increasing demand.

In the late 1980s, the Minister for Social Services Brian Howe and his advisers were aware of the transfer of municipal housing in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands to not-for-profit Housing Associations. The small stock of social housing in Australia was managed entirely through the State public housing authorities, and it was thought that Australia might benefit from alternative arrangements. A Local Government and Community Housing Fund was allocated $11 million in 1986-87. It was supposed to encourage greater tenant management, to fill gaps in existing provision, to attract other funds and to involve the community.

Initially, government showed little interest except in NSW, where the State government began to engage in innovative arrangements including head-leasing of properties from private landlords and partnerships with private and community developers.

In the 1990s some newly formed housing associations, such as Community Housing Limited (CHL) in Victoria, were able to secure contracts for the management of Transitional Housing, Aboriginal housing and other service-heavy niche operations. This provided these CHAs with basic funds for operation and limited amounts for acquisition of their own properties.

For those CHAs capable of undertaking their own design and construction, the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) operating from 2009 offered the best chance for a substantial increase in properties under management. Under the scheme, investors put up the capital for the construction of affordable housing to be let to low and moderate income households at 80% of market rent. An indexed annual incentive starting at $8,000 was paid for up to ten years, to supplement the reduced rent. Firms including CHPs advertised for investors, guaranteeing them a very good return while doing the compliance work, constructing the dwellings and managing the tenancies.

The greatest opportunity to increase the stock under management by CHAs was by transfers of public housing. In 2009, the Housing Ministers Council set a 35% target for community housing. Significant transfers of management took place in South Australia and in New South Wales in 2019 (14000 tenancies). These ‘whole of location’ transfers allowed government offices to be closed in the affected areas. The States have tended to transfer their worst housing, passing a substantial backlog of maintenance and repairs onto the CHPs. Nevertheless in the short term, these transfers have generated a substantial surplus, due to economies of scale and postponement of costs.

Under the Big Housing Build in Victoria, the "largest ever investment in social and affordable housing" in Australia, Victorian CHPs  will receive $1.38 billion to develop 4,200 new social housing homes and manage 4,000 more public housing acquisitions. Of these properties, 2,000 will be targeted for renters with a mental illness, 1,000 for victims of family violence and 820 for indigenous housing.

Advantages
From the point of view of government, the main rationale for community housing has been the possibility they would find some way of meeting the need for social housing, given that governments were unprepared to address the cost burden on-budget. The Federal Minister for Housing said in 2011, “Future demand for overall public housing is estimated to be a 28% increase in underlying demand, or around 93,000 houses, by 2023. In today's dollars that would cost about $25 billion. There is no way that State and Territory Governments backed by the Commonwealth can meet this demand alone. We need the community housing sector to play a key role here.”

Community housing does have several financial advantages over public housing as a mode of provision. CHPs have been able to engage in deals with local governments and the private sector to develop affordable housing. They have leveraged their asset base and cash flows as security to attract modest levels of private finance and build more affordable homes. The sector’s charitable status makes it exempt from GST, land tax and stamp duty, and helps it to attract philanthropic donations. Nevertheless, all these have been in practice relatively minor advantages, resulting in only a small increase in the number of affordable dwellings.

The most important financial advantage for CHPs has been is that their tenants have been eligible for Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) while public housing tenants are not. This increases the amount of rent paid by clients to something more nearly approaching the economic cost of occupation. CRA, for example, raises the amount of rent paid by a single pensioner by 70%, which approaches the true cost of managing their dwelling. The NSW Minister for Family and Community Services said in 2019, “By transferring management to CHPs we are harnessing over $1 billion of additional funding over 20 years”. . The extra funds are actually CRA from the Commonwealth.

Other advantages of community housing over public housing have been:


 * the better-organised CHPs have lower administration costs for tenancy and property management
 * they are considerably better at organising services for clients with complex needs
 * surveys of tenant satisfaction typically show better results in community housing than in public housing, suggesting CHPs are more responsive to tenant needs

In general, Labour State governments have supported public housing as the preferred mechanism for providing housing for the needy, while conservative Coalition governments have sought to transfer public housing to the community sector.

External linksinks
[https://www.parliament.vic.gov.au/images/stories/committees/SCLSI/Public_Housing_Renewal_Program/QON/PHRP-QON-CHIAVIC-ATT_1.pdf CHIA. Community housing explained]