Transformational national strategy needed to address multifaceted housing crisis

Published on the 26 February 2026

Prof. Hal Pawson says decisive remedial action across housing and housing-related policies is urgent. Photo: Adobe Stock images.

Quantifying unmet housing need and evaluating policy impact helps shape reform for a fairer, more productive housing system.

A recent confluence of housing policy initiatives offers a rare opportunity to decisively reset Australia’s future housing trajectory in the public interest, says an expert from the UNSW City Futures Research Centre.

“We’ve witnessed considerably ramped-up housing reform activism – and social/affordable housing expenditure – in the early 2020s,” says Emeritus Professor Hal Pawson.

“This is in marked contrast to the general stagnation and inaction of the previous decade. In just the last three years, serious foundations have been laid for potentially significant new directions in housing policy and housing delivery, particularly at a federal level.”

Three separate national reforms legislated in the 2022-25 Parliament – the Help to Buy and Build to Rent schemes and the Housing Australia Future Fund investment program – all contribute to a “healthier housing system”, the housing research and policy expert says.

They assist moderate income first home buyers into owner occupancy; open up scope to expand quality rental housing production by financial institutions, such as pension funds and insurance companies; and create a federally funded pipeline of social and affordable housing investment respectively.

“While many might rightly argue that these initiatives do not go far enough – they are modestly-scaled and narrowly targeted – they provide a promising platform for long-overdue progressive change.”

In their newly-published second edition of Housing Policy in Australia, Prof. Pawson and co-author Honorary Professor Vivienne Milligan outline “a pathway to the transformational national strategy needed for a fairer and more productive housing system”.

The book presented the first comprehensive overview of Australian housing policy for 25 years when it was first published in 2020. Now, extensively revised for 2025, its reform agenda has been substantially re-drafted to address the complex housing policy challenges of the mid-2020s.

“Housing unaffordability has been widely felt across the globe since the 1990s,” says Prof. Pawson.

“However, its unusually marked intensification in Australia owes much to government policy inaction, mistaken policy choices and resistance to evidence-based critical analysis.”

The book analyses the causes and implications of falling home ownership, rising rental stress rates and the long-term neglect of social housing, including the housing situation of Indigenous Australians.

It contributes evidence-led strategies to ameliorate the housing crisis. “It is decades since Australia has seen fundamental housing system reform,” Prof. Pawson says.

“Marked changes in the international and national economic context over the last quarter century have supercharged private housing investment.

“This has had inflationary consequences for property prices and the flow of economic rent to landowners, while the sharp interest rate hikes and COVID-19 disruption of the early 2020s badly aggravated the situation.

“These developments, in turn, have further entrenched the trend towards escalating wealth inequality between owners and renters, and between older homeowners and younger generations, who have been excluded from home ownership at an increasing rate.”

Today, the housing crisis is a matter of daily national discourse and decisive remedial action across both housing and housing-related policies is urgent, he says.

“If we recognise the human right to adequate housing, as defined in international law, then the Federal Government is obliged to develop, maintain and implement a national housing strategy embedded in law.

“This means addressing housing quality as well as quantity challenges to address ongoing equity issues.”

Queensland: shaping the housing reform agenda at state level

The book, in its first edition, attracted a substantial readership in industry, government and academia. Its analysis and reform propositions have fed through into policy debates across the country, influencing advocacy and government considerations.

Distinguished Professor of Economics at Curtin University and Member of the National Housing Supply and Affordability Council, Rachel Ong ViforJ described it as “an essential guide for understanding … how our housing system became mired in an ever-expanding web of complex challenges”.

Dr Marcus Spiller, a highly respected planning consultant and Vice Chair of the Australian Government’s National Housing Supply and Affordability Council says: “The book has had a huge impact on policy thinking.

“I like to think that we are at a point of inflexion on housing policy, with a vision for a genuinely ‘mixed’ system [i.e. including a significant non-market social and affordable housing component] rather than putting all our eggs in the market efficiency basket. And I’m convinced the book has had a major part in that.”

More recently, Prof. Pawson was commissioned by the Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) to lead two CFRC studies to develop actionable state-level policy solutions for the sunshine state.

“In the post-pandemic period, Queensland faced unprecedented housing pressures, with rent inflation and homelessness rising faster than any other jurisdiction,” Prof. Pawson says.

“The state’s housing and rental crisis starkly illustrated many of the system flaws outlined in our book.

“Declining home ownership, growing private rental stress, rising homelessness and shrinking social housing capacity were all there, writ large, in Queensland when we researched these issues in 2023 and 2024.”

The team’s 2023 report, A Blueprint to Tackle Queensland’s Housing Crisis, was commissioned by The Town of Nowhere campaign and supported financially by Tenants Queensland and The Services Union.

The report’s wide-ranging policy review used CFRC census-based modelling to demonstrate the scale and profile of unmet housing needs and formulated a comprehensive roadmap to address the housing crisis.

“The severity of the housing crisis more broadly is hidden by the absence of basic statistics on key social and affordable housing – an issue we recommend is addressed by establishing their annual publication, at state as well as national levels,” he says.

“The study revealed around 150,000 households across Queensland with unmet housing needs. That is, people either homeless or struggling to make ends meet as low-income private renters paying more than 30% of household income in rent.”

More than 100,000 of these households would typically be eligible for social housing, the study found. This dwarfed the number of households officially registered on the Queensland social housing waiting list, approximately 27,000.

“The report laid out an evidence-backed reform package to tackle the housing crisis at a state level, with suggestions on federal input as well. Many of these could be actioned at no cost to the government.”

National policy recommendations included reforming private landlord tax concessions and helping Queensland to phase in broad-based land tax to replace stamp duty, as well as overhauling rent assistance.

State-level recommendations included further strengthening rental regulation and expanding social and affordable rental housing.

The subsequent 2024 report, Breaking Ground: Progress Update and Assessment of Queensland’s Housing Crisis, found that Queensland’s house price and rent inflation had continued to outpace Australia as a whole.

Brisbane property prices increased by 65% from 2020-2024, almost double the Australian capital city average (34%). New tenancy rents rose by 45% over the same period.

“Since 2020, the number of new lettings at rents affordable to low-income households in the state had plunged from 23% to just 10%t of all private tenancies raising serious equity issues.”

In March 2024, less than 1% of all available rentals were affordable to a single person earning minimum wage. “Unfortunately, these conditions can mean being pushed into homelessness.”

Accordingly, the number of Queenslanders depending on homelessness services grew by 34% in the five years to 2024, with more families seeking emergency help to survive. “For some, the shortage of affordable rental homes means being condemned to living in tents and cars or being stuck in motel rooms.”

The research helped inform QCOSS’s reform proposals and campaigns. “The evidence-based solutions outlined in [the reports] … have enabled our effective participation in housing reform discussions,” said QCOSS CEO, Aimee McVeigh.

“Using the solutions outlined in the blueprint, we can demonstrate to government that the housing crisis is solvable.”

More cohesive integrated approach needed

“The book and our related research has highlighted the need for more cohesive policymaking,” says Prof. Pawson.

“Throughout, we identify current and future housing challenges for Australian governments, recognising these as a complex set of interconnected problems that demand an integrated policy response.

“Importantly, our 2023 report argued that Queensland’s housing affordability and homelessness problems had been compounded by the state’s fragmented and underpowered approach to policymaking in these areas.”

Consistent with this analysis, and as reflected in the team’s 2024 report, the Queensland Government undertook a large-scale reorganisation of housing policy governance during 2023-24, creating a unified stand-alone housing department, a cross-departmental housing committee and an expert advisory panel.

“This represents progress towards rebuilding housing policymaking capacity within government,” says Prof Pawson. “The Federal Government’s more recent integration of its previously fragmented housing policy teams within Treasury is an equally laudable move.

“Our hope is that this whole stream of research can inform the wide-ranging roadmap of feasible and realistic policies needed to confront Australia’s housing policy challenge.

“Pursued with ambition by Australian governments, a more coherent and integrated policy reform agenda can enable a fairer and more productive housing system for the benefit of all.”