Measuring the distributional impact of direct and indirect housing assistance

The purpose of this paper is to present aggregate and distributional data on the major forms of housing assistance provided both through government outlays and taxation expenditures. These include five major benefit areas: direct assistance provided through Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA), public rental housing rebates under the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA), the Australian Government's First Home Owner Grant (FHOG), and indirect assistance through non-taxation of imputed rent for occupiers and capital gains tax exemption for home owners. This report by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is the Institute's contribution to the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute's (AHURI) research project 60098: a distributional analysis of the impact of direct and indirect housing assistance. While it covers a range of assistance types, the data presented in this paper are not comprehensive due to the diversity of forms of assistance and the lack of information at the national level on these benefits. The approach taken in this paper represents only one methodology that can be employed, and it is important to recognise that other assumptions could be used in estimating the value of assistance to households.