Australia's affordable housing shortfall cannot be solved without a substantial lift in overall housing supply, according to the Property Council of Australia, which argues that tax settings and delivery costs, not scheme definitions, are the real barrier to progress.
The intervention follows an ABC Four Corners investigation into the affordable housing system, which questioned how affordable housing is defined and whether rents under some state schemes are genuinely affordable for lower-income households.
Property Council chief executive Mike Zorbas (pictured) said scrutiny of these models was reasonable, but argued the coverage overlooked the deeper structural issues limiting new supply.
Social and affordable housing makes up less than 4% of Australia's housing stock, even as demand keeps climbing, and the country continues to sit below the OECD average for housing supply per capita.
The scarcity shows up in the approvals data too: in June, total dwelling approvals fell 3.4% to 16,710 in April, seasonally adjusted, on top of a 10.5% drop in March, leaving approvals for the year to April at 200,424, still short of the National Housing Accord's 240,000-a-year benchmark.
Compounding the shortage, Australia imposes some of the highest housing-related taxes and charges of any developed economy — the Property Council puts the figure at around 40 cents of every dollar spent on a new home flowing to government through taxes, charges, and regulatory costs.
"We have a housing supply deficit across social, affordable and market housing," Zorbas said. "The question is not whether we need more affordable housing. The question is how we deliver it at the scale our growing cities require."
Even so, the outlook has improved since last year: the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's State of the Housing System 2026 report, released in April, now forecasts around 980,000 new homes by June 2029, up 42,000 on last year's estimate, with the 1.2-million target expected by September 2030.
The Property Council is also pushing for greater consistency in how housing categories, including social housing, affordable housing, land lease communities, and student accommodation, are defined, arguing this would sharpen policy design without major cost.
"The least cost fix is improving the national definitions of housing," Zorbas said.
The organisation continues to back the Housing Australia Future Fund as a key funding lever despite its imperfections.
"The HAFF is not perfect, but it's a damn sight better than the underinvestment in social and affordable housing over the past four decades," Zorbas said, adding that closing the funding gap will ultimately require sustained private and institutional investment alongside government support.
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