Growing social, community and affordable housing

One of the key features of the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA) is the significant emphasis on the community housing sector as a key deliverer of social and affordable housing. Community housing providers are recognised as sophisticated commercial entities often operating at scale and with a capacity to expand to help meet the growing demand for more low cost housing. The NAHA provided opportunities for growth: the removal of the cap on stock transfer and a commitment from Housing Ministers to transfer up to 75 per cent of Social Housing Initiative (SHI) dwellings into the sector and an overall objective of seeing up to 35 per cent of all social housing in the community housing sector by 2014. The National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) provided another avenue for growth, with 50,000 incentives for new affordable housing accessible to the community housing sector.