Social Housing

Social Housing

In the 40 years between 1981 and 2021 the percentage of all Australian households living in social housing (i.e. state owned and managed public housing or community managed housing) has ranged from 4.9 per cent in 1981 to 3.8 per cent in 2021 (from 2021 ABS Census). Such a drop in the proportion of social housing raises the question of has Australia achieved the balance right, and also just what is the right level of social housing for Australia?

To put Australia's level of social housing into perspective, we can look at other countries with broadly similar cultural characteristics and values: England, New Zealand, Canada and the USA.
In 2018 Statistics Canada said 628,700 Canadian households, more than one in ten renter households nationally (13.5% of 4,652,500), were living in social and affordable housing. In 2021 the Canadian Census said there were 14,978,940 households, which means about 4.2 of all households were living in social housing.

In New Zealand, as of 30 June 2021, there were 74,337 public housing households. With a total estimate of 1,865,300 households in March 2021 for the country, this equates to 4.0% of households living in social housing.

In England (in 2018) 17% of households (3.9 million) lived in social housing, while the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development publishes that 1.2 million households live in public housing, which is 0.98 per cent of all housing (122,354,219 households in 2020).
As can be seen, there is a very wide spread of levels of social housing across these countries that culturally similar to Australia.