Like everyone else, I've been following the Commonwealth Budget closely. We are in the middle of a housing crisis and I was really hoping we would see some serious moves to address this through rebuilding our social and affordable housing system.
We didn't quite get there this time around, but at least there were some small steps forward. We have a 15% increase to Commonwealth Rent Assistance, which will go a little way to bridging the affordability gap. We have increased funding capacity for the National Housing Finance Investment Corporation and some tax changes which will make Build to Rent more viable.
Aside from this, the Government is still in negotiation with the greens to get the Housing Affordability Future Fund legislation through the senate. Assuming this is passed at some point, it will invest $10b with the proceeds financing 30,000 social and affordable housing dwellings over five years. The Greens are pushing for more ambition and have already got the Government to agree to an extra $2b in social housing funding and an indexation of the funds spending. Hopefully they can get more.
None of this will really fix the long-term neglect of social housing but at least it's something, and I know the various advocacy organisations will keep on pushing for more. If you haven't already, make sure you sign up to Everybody's Home's campaign to add your voice to this push.
Meanwhile on questions dear to my Climate/Housing heart, we're seeing the first serious moves 0n energy efficiency in existing homes. The budget includes $1.3b for energy efficiency upgrades. $1b of this will go to the Clean Energy Finance Corporation to provide low-interest loans to owner-occupiers for home energy upgrades. Even more exciting is that the other $300m will go towards energy upgrades for social housing. The plan is for this to be matched by the State Governments and provide upgrades to around 60,000 social housing dwellings.
Energy efficiency is a big issue for people living in social housing, particularly in older dwellings. While new dwellings are required to score 6 stars on the NATHERS energy rating scale (soon to go up to 7) homes that are 20 years old or more have an average rating of just 1.5 stars. These means social housing tenants, who are among the poorest people in our community, have to pay more than the rest of us for their energy bills and can struggle to keep their homes cool in summer and warm in winter. Meanwhile, through no fault of their own their homes contribute more than newer homes to our housing-related greenhouse emissions.
Obviously there's a long way to go before we know how this will be implemented, with program design and negotiation between the Commonwealth and States to be got through first. But I'll be watching closely to see how it works out and hoping for good things for social housing tenants and for the climate.
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