Housing Policies in Australia

Drawing on Abelson and Joyeux (2025), this paper outlines the major house pricing, home ownership and rental issues, including homelessness, that need to be addressed. To address these issues, this paper discusses five major sets of current and potential policies: housing supply; taxation of housing; regulations of the housing market; government support for low-income households for renting and owning homes; and the provision of social (public and community) housing. These policies are assessed for their efficiency and equity impacts. The paper also discusses briefly two related public policies with implications for housing prices: migration and national population distribution. There is no single solution to the variety of issues. The paper supports a combination of several policies, including increasing housing supply with a focus on lower-priced housing, minor tax changes relating to housing, more support for low-income first homeowners and renters, and more social housing, rather than a single policy.