Summary

Overview of community housing in 2007-08

This section provides an overview of the information reported for 2007-08 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) community housing data collection. Note that some of the figures reported are understated owing to survey response rates (refer to Section 4.3 for details).

There were approximately 35,667 households living in community housing in Australia at 30 June 2008 occupying over 99% of tenantable community housing stock. Of these, 6% were identified as Indigenous households, 28% contained households with a disability, and 14% were from a non-English-speaking background. Seven per cent of principal tenants were aged 24 years or under and 8% of principal tenants were 75 years or over.

Of the 8,728 new tenancies in 2007-08, 62% of these were classified as special needs households and 36% were homeless at the time of allocation. At 30 June 2008, 93% of community housing households in Australia were low income households. Over half (53%) of the households for which complete rent and income details were known were paying more than 20% but not more than 25% of their income in rent (Figure 1). Nearly one-fifth (18%) of households were paying 20% or less and only 14% of households were paying more than 30% of their income in rent.

Overall, community housing tenants retained almost three-quarters (74%) of their household income after rental payments.

Figure 1: Proportion of rent payments relative to income, 30 June 2008

Pie graph showing: households paying 20% or less of assessable income in rent; households paying more than 20% but not more than 25% of assessable income in rent; Households paying more than 25% but not more than 30% of assessable income in rent; and Households paying more than 30% of assessable income in rent.

Source: Table 2.1, Community housing 2007-08.

Of the 1,069 community housing providers at 30 June 2008, three-quarters managed less than 20 dwellings each; 15% of community housing providers managed between 20 and 49 dwellings; only 11% of providers managed 50 or more dwellings.

Overall, community housing dwellings contained on average 2.2 bedrooms. One-third of community housing dwellings contained one bedroom, 30% contained two bedrooms, 36% of dwellings had three to four bedrooms, and only 1% of community housing dwellings had five or more bedrooms. One-third of community housing dwellings were flats, units or apartments and 31% were classed as separate houses. The remaining dwelling types were 'other' dwellings (15%), semi-detached, row or terrace houses, townhouses (12%) and boarding or rooming house unit dwellings (9%).

Nationally, over two-thirds (67%) of community housing dwellings were located in Major cities, 20% were located in Inner regional Australia, 10% in Outer regional areas, and 3% were located in Remote and very remote areas (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Remoteness of community housing dwellings by jurisdictions, 30 June 2008

Horizontal bar charts showing state on y-axis and per cent on x-axis. Key shows: major cities; inner regional; outer regional; and remote and very remote.

Source: Table 2.1, Community housing 2007-08.