What can Councils do about affordable housing?

Housing
What can Councils do about affordable housing?
Georgia Allan

Georgia Allan

Customer Success Manager

Key Highlights

  • The article introduces a structured approach for local governments to address housing affordability through five key pillars: Inform, Advocate, Partner and Support, Intervene, and Monitor. This framework provides actionable strategies tailored to various stages of the housing continuum.
  • Councils are encouraged to disseminate clear, evidence-based information about housing needs and affordability challenges within their communities. This involves leveraging data to raise awareness among stakeholders and the public.
  • By building robust evidence bases, councils can effectively advocate for policy reforms and funding at state and federal levels, ensuring that local housing needs are addressed in broader governmental strategies.
  • The article emphasises the importance of councils partnering with community housing providers, developers, and other stakeholders to facilitate the development and maintenance of affordable housing projects.
  • Local governments can take proactive measures such as providing land, offering incentives, or implementing planning controls to directly influence the supply of affordable housing.
  • Establishing mechanisms to continuously monitor housing affordability metrics enables councils to assess the effectiveness of their strategies and make data-driven adjustments as needed.
  • The article introduces a free ebook titled "How Councils can influence affordable housing," offering detailed insights and case studies to assist councils in implementing these strategies effectively. 

Today we’re launching a new resource – an ebook we hope will provide you with some new ideas for tackling housing affordability in your area.

You can download your free copy of How Councils can influence affordable housing here, or read about the inspiration behind the ebook and an overview of its contents below.

Every time we speak with people that work in local government, we’re blown away by the passion they have for improving their communities. While many people still associate Councils with the ‘three R’s’ (rates, roads and rubbish), Councils are responsible for and work in a much wider range of areas.

Some of the issues Councils are trying to address are really complex. And sometimes with difficult problems its hard to know what to do or how to start to solve them. Housing affordability is one such issue that we’ve heard that many Councils are currently grappling with.

We want to help
.id are in a really privileged position of working with Councils across Australia, hearing about the housing affordability issues in their areas and the various approaches being taken to address the issue. We’d like to think of ourselves as a conduit between different Councils – sharing what we learn from one Council with those facing similar issues. That’s why we’ve put together our new ebook, sharing a range of actions Council can undertake to address housing affordability.

We’ve collated these actions around the housing affordability continuum, and five pillars:

  • Inform
  • Advocate
  • Partner and Support
  • Intervene
  • Monitor

Get your copy of the ebook
You can download this free resource here

Help us help more Councils
We want to hear from you! Is your Council working on projects in the affordable housing space? We’d love to hear how you’re approaching it and the actions you’ve undertaken so that your ideas can help other Councils facing similar problems.

Or do you have a question about how to gain more visibility on the affordability of housing in your area? We’d love to chat – you can book a time with us here, or send us your questions and we’ll do our best to help!

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