2024, "Vacant Houses", Parity

The shortage of housing in remote communities, and their deteriorated condition, has long been associated with high levels of crowding, homelessness and serious health and social problems affecting the wellbeing of Indigenous Australians. A contributing factor to poor housing standards was the diversity of housing providers and grants as well as complex and confusing land tenure arrangements. To address these problems, the Commonwealth, states and the Northern Territory established the National Partnership Agreement on Remote Indigenous Housing, (NPARIH) in 2008. NPARIH was a 10-year, $5.5b Commonwealthfunded tenancy management and capital works program of new housing and refurbishment of existing housing (DSS 2013a). Under NPARIH, remote Indigenous housing came under a single regime managed by the state and territory governments, through their public housing agencies, The aim was to introduce robust and standardised tenancy management consistent with public housing standards and a repairs and maintenance program that increased the life cycle of housing, improved housing conditions and expanded housing options in remote Indigenous communities (COAG 2008a: 5). This divestment of historical Commonwealth responsibility to the states and territories was an audacious policy change, involving an attempt to mainstream remote Indigenous housing that was formerly mostly managed by the Indigenous community housing sector. With NPARIH now ending, it is timely to review how tenancy management arrangements are working given the substantial investment and the need to ensure arrangements are sustainable over the long term. This project builds on research undertaken in 2013 that investigated the tenancy management arrangements that followed the introduction of NPARIH in the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia (Habibis, Phillips et al. 2014). It is not a review of NPARIH itself, and includes some consideration of non-NPARIH communities. This second phase of the study commenced in mid-2014 and investigates how well tenancy management arrangements are working under NPARIH, the appropriateness and effectiveness of the tenancy management policy and service delivery approaches, and the efficiency and value for money of the service delivery models. It aims to identify and share across jurisdictions, and nationally, the policy and practice lessons gained from the NPARIH experience.

2013

According to the 2006 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 259,000 units of the Australian national public housing stock were built before 1980. At the same time the rate of new social housing being added has continued to decrease annually during the last 15 years. Therefore a major issue for all State Housing Authorities (SHAs) is ageing stock. In such a situation maintenance of current stock becomes a major factor in meeting an increased demand for government subsided housing. Thus the role of facilities maintenance is of primary importance and warrants research into current practice. This study of five State Housing Authorities found that Facilities Management Plans were used by all states. However, both internal and external factors prevented full implementation of these plans resulting in continued maintenance backlog. This backlog, combined with ageing stock, means that although implementation of predictive maintenance would be considered best facilities managemen...

2016

Purpose / Context-New detached houses have been getting larger in New Zealand for several decades. Large houses require more materials to build, and have greater ongoing energy costs than smaller houses built to the same standard. The purpose of this work was to examine whether larger houses are as efficient at accommodating people as smaller houses. Methodology / Approach-On-line house schematics from major franchise builders in New Zealand were accessed, and a stratified random sample selected based on dwelling floor-area and developer. These schematics were analysed for number and area of bedrooms (and potential bedrooms), and number of toilets/bathrooms. Schematics for older social housing were also analysed. The potential occupancy was calculated using several methods. Results-Older social housing had similar potential occupancy to new franchise dwellings of similar size. Larger new franchise dwellings tended to have a lower potential occupancy per square metre than smaller dwellings. Key Findings / Implications-Large houses are built to satisfy current perceived market demands. The ability of the owners to pay for maintenance, and the occupiers to pay for heating/cooling energy will affect both how long the dwelling will last and occupant health. Inefficiencies designed into dwelling structure will remain unless there is a major renovation. Large dwellings with high building, running and carbon costs, which are unable to safely and healthily accommodate an appropriate number of people, are unsustainable for society. Originality-This paper provides a critique of the trend of increasing dwelling size.

1981

The National Bureau of Standards (NBS) has prepared a report on the methodology of Project Feedback, the evaluation of Operation Breakthrough housing in use (a post-occupancy housing evaluation). The report introduces housing evalua- tions and encourages their use by providing both housing questionnaires and a nontechnical, practical discussion of research methods in general and of survey research in particular. To increase the sophistication of housing evaluation research designs, the report includes a tested approach for selecting control group respondents for housing evaluations. In addition, it summarizes results of NBS's housing evaluations, principally to illustrate ways of categorizing (coding) occupants' answers, but also to introduce these studies and their results. The case study approach Is meant to encourage readers to build on NBS's experiences. This book is suitable for research and instructional purposes.

2011

According to the 2006 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 259,000 units of the Australian national public housing stock were built before 1980. At the same time the rate of new social housing being added has continued to decrease annually during the last 15 years. Therefore a major issue for all State Housing Authorities (SHAs) is ageing stock. In such a situation maintenance of current stock becomes a major factor in meeting an increased demand for government subsided housing. Thus the role of facilities maintenance is of primary importance and warrants research into current practice. This study of five State Housing Authorities found that Facilities Management Plans were used by all states. However, both internal and external factors prevented full implementation of these plans resulting in continued maintenance backlog. This backlog, combined with ageing stock, means that although implementation of predictive maintenance would be considered best facilities managemen...

2016

According to the 2006 figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, 259,000 units of the Australian national public housing stock were built before 1980. At the same time the rate of new social housing being added has continued to decrease annually during the last 15 years. Therefore a major issue for all State Housing Authorities (SHAs) is ageing stock. In such a situation maintenance of current stock becomes a major factor in meeting an increased demand for government subsided housing. Thus the role of facilities maintenance is of primary importance and warrants research into current practice. This study of five State Housing Authorities found that Facilities Management Plans were used by all states. However, both internal and external factors prevented full implementation of these plans resulting in continued maintenance backlog. This backlog, combined with ageing stock, means that although implementation of predictive maintenance would be considered best facilities managemen...

2018

in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the NZ Government, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) or any other government agency. MBIE has made every effort to ensure that the information contained in this report is reliable, but does not guarantee its accuracy or completeness and does not accept any liability for any errors.

2014

The housing undersupply is a current issue in many capital cities in Australia. The relevant statistics to the housing shortage has been reported by the Australian government and housing industry associations. The gaps between demand and supply continuously have increased over the past years. Many factors contribute to the shortage of the Australian housing supply. One of the key factors is the house completion time. To overcome the shortage situation, it is significant to know how completion time can be improved. The completion time guarantees the time of housing delivery to house customers. In this paper, Little’s law is used to discuss the physics of the Australian house building. Additionally, capacity and sales and operations planning strategies are the focal aspects to improve the Australian house completion time.

Scientific Data, 2022

Each year the proportion of Australians who rent their home increases and, for the first time in generations, there are now as many renters as outright homeowners. Researchers and policy makers, however, know very little about housing conditions within Australia’s rental housing sector due to a lack of systematic, reliable data. In 2020, a collaboration of Australian universities commissioned a survey of tenant households to build a data infrastructure on the household and demographic characteristics, housing quality and conditions in the Australian rental sector. This data infrastructure was designed to be national (representative across all Australian States and Territories), and balanced across key population characteristics. The resultant Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset (ARHCD) is a publicly available data infrastructure for researchers and policy makers, providing a basis for national and international research.