Mapping Community Housing in Australia

This project was jointly undertaken by the NCHF and the Australian Institute for Health and Welfare (AIHW).The research involved a survey of key aspects of community housing in Australia including: the amount and distribution of community housing across the country; the kinds of organisations managing community housing; the types of properties, who has title and how they have been funded; and the groups that have access to and are housed in community housing.

For the first time, the study included organisations not funded through the CSHA. However, it did not cover crisis accommodation or Indigenous housing.

The final report of the mapping project and a mapping summary are available, by order.

This study was conducted to investigate the opportunities and threats for IT standards across the Australian community housing sector. It was conducted with a series of interviews with interested parties from across the sector, including providers, peak bodies and government agencies. The study looked at: provider management systems; provider financial management systems; data collection and high level reporting; and agency information technology.

The study was undertaken by Pollak Partners for the NCHF.

Copies of the final report, Scoping study of potential for national development of standardised IT for community housing, are available by order.

Building a better system: a national Expo of best practice in community housing was held at the University of Adelaide in April 1999.

The Expo had the specific objective of identifying where community housing is pushing the boundaries across all parts of the industry. It aimed to show how various projects or organisations have taken community housing further – and most importantly – how other can replicate the results.

Following the Expo, the Building a Better System Manual was published providing summaries of the work and projects presented at the Expo.

This project was initiated by a national meeting of public and community housing officers to discuss the development of a national framework to manage the development of training in the industry. The growing complexity facing social housing practitioners led many to the view that a professional association – similar to the Chartered Institute of Housing in the UK – may help practitioners to better face this task.

The project was divided into two parts: to research attitudes towards a professional association and desk top research leading to a draft business plan. Specifically, the project:

Support for a professional association was strong. As a result, the Australasian Housing Institute (AHI) was launched in October 2001.

The final report - Investigation of the opportunity to Establish a Social Housing professional is available online.

State of Play was prepared by the National Community Housing Forum to provide a snapshot of the community housing system in each state and territory in Australia. The first edition covered 1997-1998. The second edition covers the period 1998-1999.

The structure for the report was drawn from the Strategic Framework for Community Housing in Australia (1999-2003).

The framework sets out the key result areas for a viable and sustainable community housing system. Each key result area contains elements you would look for in a well developed community housing system. It is these elements which are used to consider the state of play in each state and territory.

State of Play is a complementary report to the framework. It describes the community housing system at the start of the framework period and is one way of considering how the vision and priorities are made real. The report does not set out to make comparisons between states and territories as local circumstances (from geography to legislation) mean the approach differs. However it is useful to consider the developments across the community housing system nationally and to identify emerging gaps.

State of Play 1998/99 is available by order.