Transforming housing: affordable housing for all

This project seeks to build partnerships to transform Melbourne’s housing industry, in order to meet social justice, economic resilience, and environmental sustainability challenges facing Melbourne and Australia. The overarching aim of this project is collaboration: fostering partnerships between key stakeholders interested in improving and expanding the provision of affordable housing.

This project (July 2014 - December 2015) follows directly on from the successful first round Carlton Connect Initiatives Fund Research Collaboration project ‘Getting to Yes: Overcoming Barriers to Affordable Family-Friendly Housing’ (March 2013 - June 2014).

About Transforming Housing

Transforming Housing is an action research project aimed at creating multi-sectoral partnerships to expand the amount and quality of affordable housing in Australia. The current research focus is on Melbourne, which is projected to become Australia’s largest city by 2050 (ABS, 2014). By affordable housing, we mean housing that does not cost more (through rent or mortgage payments) than 30% of gross household incomes for the lowest two income quintiles. By quality of affordable housing, we refer to location (located near job and services such as education and healthcare, which are accessible via public transport, walking or cycling), diversity (a range of housing sizes from studio apartments to 3+ bedroom houses or units, so that communities are mixed in terms of household composition and enable people to age in place) and design (good light, storage, community space, access to proximate public open space, etc.).

The aim of the project is to generate partnerships based on mutual respect and co-learning that result in substantial and sustainable policy shift, as well as industry innovations, towards more and better affordable housing. It is intended to inform the affordable housing policy in the refresh of Plan Melbourne, work being underdone by the Office of the Victorian Government Architect, the housing policies of the Cities of Melbourne and Port Phillip, the work of the Lord Mayor’s Charitable Foundation in scaling up philanthropic sector involvement in affordable housing finance, and other industry outcomes.

Timeline of Events

An Industry Workshop with project partners and key industry representatives was held on 17 October 2014. Three core research themes were explored: sustainable funding options, policy and regulatory options, and partnership options, including demonstration projects that could showcase high quality, innovative and aspirational design, financing and policy options for Australia. This was a satellite event to the main Carlton Connect Conference (Challenges, Partnerships Solutions, held 30 September – 2 October 2014 at the University of Melbourne). You can download the background paper for this event, as well as a summary of the discussions held at the workshop.

The core research themes all led to research papers, which can be found in the Project Reports section of this page. In addition, an Options Paper was developed, which was intended to lead to concrete commitments from key sectors: state government, local government, private developers, community housing organisations and investors. The Options Paper was the basis for discussion at an invitation-only Affordable Housing Summit held 30 April – 1 May 2015. The Options Paper can be downloaded here. The proceedings of and outcomes from the Summit are detailed in the Affordable Housing Summit Report, which can be downloaded here. Presentations by keynote speakers at the Summit can be found in thePresentations section of this page.

Transforming Housing recently hosted a number of workshops and public events featuring visiting experts on affordable housing as guest speakers. You can find out more about these events, including presentation slides and/or videos in thePresentations section of this page.

Professor Whitzman gave a presentation at the Australia and New Zealand Association of Planning Schools (ANZAPS) Conference relating to Transforming Housing’s research in October 2015. She and other researchers will also be presenting their work at the State of Australian Cities Conference at the Gold Coast in December 2015. You can access these papers in the Conference Papers section of this page.

Researchers

Carolyn Whitzman [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Clare Newton [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Alan Pert [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Donald Bates [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Georgia Warren-Myers [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Andrew Martel [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]
Andy Krause [Melbourne School of Design, Architecture Building and Planning, UoM]