Summary

Housing plays a critical role in the health and wellbeing of Australians. Affordable and safe housing can help people avoid housing stress, which improves household wellbeing. Housing assistance can provide support by providing access to social housing (such as rental housing below market rates) and targeted financial assistance (such as rent or home purchase assistance).

Data in this report are primarily sourced from the AIHW National Housing Assistance Data Repository. Compiled and managed by the AIHW, this repository contains data from the public housing (PH), state owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH), community housing (CH) and Indigenous community housing (ICH) collections. Administrative data from financial assistance programs—private rental and home purchase assistance— is also included.

Key results from Housing assistance in Australia 2020 include:

All data are available in the data tables, organised by topics.

This report also contains a state and territory data visualisation with key information about housing assistance at the national and state and territory levels.

For further information about the social housing and financial assistance collections, see the Data quality statements.