With regard to affordable housing providers themselves, we consider that there is a strong cohort of commercially-oriented and independent NFPs with considerable capacity for further growth and development. Better utilisation of their capacity and realisation of scale economies could be achieved through a (preferably national) industry plan that sets clear affordable housing growth targets and is underpinned with secure and adequate subsidy streams, and more cost-effective private financing approaches. Balance sheet enhancement—via giving large CHPs greater control of managed assets—will also be beneficial to growth and efficiency goals. Strengthening the policy framework for affordable housing could also be expected to attract new entrants to the industry from both the for-profit and NFP sectors.

Many smaller registered providers also have potential for modest growth and partnering approaches. Their futures are important to meeting Australia’s geographic spread of housing needs, meeting complex and special needs, fostering innovation and leveraging local community resources. Capacity-building could be designed to assist their further growth and development as appropriate within a framework of a future industry plan and an industry-negotiated strategic approach to market shaping.

Specific attention must be given to building governance capacity and organisational scale in the ICHO sector and to reinstating a strong Indigenous voice within the industry. Along with improving the cultural proficiency of mainstream services, retention of robust and culturally-adapted housing services for Indigenous households is essential to both government and community ambitions to ‘close the gap’ in indigenous disadvantage.

Priority areas for bolstering the current affordable housing industry supporting institutions and infrastructure that have been identified through the assessment so far include:

• Enhancing leadership, expertise and coordination within government.
• Separating the administration of public and affordable housing.
• Completing and refreshing national regulation.
• Joint government and industry guidance of industry development and restructuring.
• Reinforcing the leadership and capacity-building functions of industry peak bodies.
• Industry core data reform and housing needs modelling.
• Development of specialist financial brokerage arrangements.
• Restoring culturally appropriate institutional arrangements to support the provision of Indigenous housing.