ONE of Australia’s most innovative housing providers is calling on bipartisan support for a long-term strategy on affordable housing supply, as an election year threatens to halt momentum in government activity and private investment in the sector.
Robert Pradolin, a former Frasers Property Australia general manager, is the co-founder and director of Housing All Australians (HAA), a national private sector “for purpose” organisation and registered charity, which has in collaboration with PEXA engineered Australia’s first digital Affordable Housing Register (AHR).
“Oscillation between different the ideological perspectives of Labor and Liberal and the Greens doesn’t provide confidence for the industry to invest in infrastructure called housing to ensure that our future population has sufficient housing to meet its fundamental human needs,” Pradolin told Australian Property Journal.
“It has to be a long-term bipartisan strategy that ends up with more supply. We have to do more supply, and it has to be to the extent that it puts downward pressure on pricing, otherwise we’ll never solve our affordable housing problem.”
The property industry and government have been looking at solutions to solve the national housing crisis that has been driven by a huge mismatch between supply and demand. It has forced vacancies to historic lows, driving rents up, and stretched affordability in the housing market to its worst level on record.
Asked what he expected from government on the social and affordable housing front in an interrupted 2025, Pradolin said, “Other than executing what’s been awarded by HAFF (Housing Australia Future Fund), not much, which is unfortunate”.
The Housing Australia Future Fund officially kicked off in July, aiming to deliver 20,000 social homes and 10,000 affordable homes over five years. In addition, the National Housing According Facility is looking to deliver a further 10,000 affordable homes.
In 2021 Housing Australia – then the NHFIC – identified in a report by Chris Leptos that the shortfall in social and affordable housing would come in at a cost of $290 billion over the next 20 years – equating to $14.5 billion every year for two decades.
Across the country there are around 165,000 applicants for public housing, according to AHURI, another applicants 40,000 for community housing, and over 12,000 for state-owned and managed Indigenous housing
“The HAFF is heading in the right direction. But what anyone in business or in the community wants to see is a bipartisan approach to housing as essential infrastructure for a prosperous future Australia,” Pradolin told Australian Property Journal.
“Industry wants to get stability and guidelines to ensure that they can then mobilise private capital over a long-term perspective.
“And if there is a change of government, we don’t want to have the uncertainty where the market stops while the other party gets into position to do things, because we just can’t afford the time wasted as a country.
“If we don’t have our human needs met, we have unintended human consequences, socially and economically.
“We’ve got a lot, lot more work to do.”
The HAFF and NHAF are running concurrently with the Albanese government’s much vaunted National Housing Accord, which aims to deliver 1.2 million homes. However, labour shortages, high materials costs and capacity constrain in the construction industry have cast severe doubts over the nation’s ability to achieve the target.
Immediate “relief valve” needed
An interruption at the scale of a messy federal election is one of the last things affordable housing needs.
“I’ve been in property for 40 years, and I’ve covered land, medium-density apartments, social housing, disability housing. So I think I’ve got a reasonable idea about how the ecosystem works. Yet the people that form the policies don’t really understand how the property industry works, the long lead time it needs,” Pradolin said.
“If you want to say we want some additional housing, it takes five years. So I think we need a pressure relief valve while we build the housing our country needs. Things like the utilisation of empty bedrooms. All we need is 1%. That’s 138,000 rooms for essential workers close to where they work.
“There’s so many empty buildings out there that could be used for short-term transitional housing across the country. They’ve already been built. There’s no cost issue. Let’s use our existing infrastructure as a pressure relief valve to put a downward pressure on pricing so that vulnerable people can have a place to sleep.”
Housing All Australians has been identifying empty buildings and using them as short-term shelter with the goodwill of the property sector, partnering with Henley Homes, Metricon, Mirvac, Hanson Yuncken and Better Living Group.
“They’re all contributing around the country to help. We, as the private sector, as compassionate capitalists, must stand up and reshape the conversation,” Pradolin said.
Private sector support has just helped unlock $7 million in government funding to enable the launch of the Wyn Carr House project in Fremantle, delivering transitional accommodation for women aged over 55 facing homelessness. The Housing All Australians project was made possible through several private benefactors, with over $1 million in pro-bono services and materials secured from more than 30 private sector organisations.
“My personal view is that we should declare war on this issue because I can see the long-term economic problems. I use the word ‘war’ because it’s the only one that describes to me where enemies come together in the national interest. That is how bad this is in my view,” Pradolin said.
Australia’s peak community housing provider organisation, PowerHousing Australia, recently unveiled its ambitious target of making one in every 10 homes social or affordable within 20 years, and believes the sector is up for the fight.
It called for federal government policies that will “fully harness the ability of community housing providers to build social and affordable housing at the scale Australia needs”.
