Australia Supportive Housing Needs Modelling

National feedback session

19 July 2024

Introductions

​

About CSH

CSH is United States 501c3 nonprofit intermediary organization and CDFI that advances supportive housing as an approach to help people thrive. 

​

Since our founding in 1991, CSH has distributed more than $1.7 billion in loans and grants that has created over 467,000 homes for individuals and families exiting long-term homelessness.

csh.org

Supportive Housing Needs Assessments in the U.S.

• CSH has conducted a national supportive housing needs assessment in the U.S. Data – CSH
• We’ve done state level needs assessments in states (CA, FL) that include financial modelling – answering the question: What would it cost to build enough housing to meet the need we see in our community today?
• The California Homeless Housing Needs Assessment (csh.org)
• Florida Assessment of Housing for Special Needs and Homeless Populations 2021 (floridahousing.org)

​

​

Why Modeling is Important

• Sets a goal/target for the community
• Makes a long term vision, specific
• Populations
• Money
• Disparities
• Utilization
• Models
• Political will
• Timeline
• Highlights the gaps

​

Three Communities in Australia

• Western Australia
• Perth Metro
• Bunbury

• Queensland
• Brisbane + Logan

​

Translation to Australian Context: Supportive Housing System as Part of Social Housing System

• In the Australian setting, we think of the model as something of an enhanced social housing program, with established rent contributions and sustained, long term support services
• Government provides the capital, rent/operating funding and services for each development
• A supportive housing system would ideally be a part of each state’s social housing portfolio, designed to meet people eligible for social housing who are more vulnerable and need long term support to be successful in housing

The end results will be…

By Name List – People you KNOW are experiencing homelessness and frequently presenting in other systems

​

People/households with needs consistent with supportive housing that are currently institutionalized elsewhere (jails, DV system)

Cost of capital to develop more housing

​

Cost of operating costs (rent) to keep people in housing

​

Cost of services to keep people in housing

​

Methodology – High Level

CSH Supportive Housing modelling takes a multi-sector approach to project the need for supportive housing

• Three primary types of data are taken into account:
• Data about how many people are accounted for in each sector
• Data about what share of the people in each system have needs consistent with supportive housing
• Data about the costs related to bringing supportive housing units online, operating them, and providing services

Modeling need is an iterative process

• Assumptions that are fed into the model can change
• With community feedback
• With better quality data (more granular, more recent)
• The circumstances and landscape can (and will!) change over time

​

Step 1: Gather SH needs across systems

• Percentages in Australia can be based on research or on assessments done through the AtoZ work that assess acuity
• Data is not annual but rather as close to "point in time" as possible (I.e. over a month or quarter) so as to avoid duplication

​

Step 2: Assess current housing inventory

• How many units are already planned?
• How much unit turnover do you have and can you expect to come on-line and place people into?

Step 3: Gather housing costs

• What is the per-unit cost of developing a unit?
• How much does rent cost per unit per year?
• What is the average cost of providing services to one household?

Step 4: Make a plan

• Data on need and costs feeds into calculations
• Decision points include:
• How long will the plan be?
• How many units per year?
• What types of developments will be included

​

Data Sources Identified for Australia

Sources for SH Capital, Operating and Services Costs

Sources for People and Households Needing SH

• Zero Project WA: Track Our Progress – Zero Project WA

Contains data gathered in several communities in WA; Intended to be a tool for providing “live” data on who’s experiencing homelessness, creating a “By Name List” (BNL).

We used the most recent available, April 2024 for this presentation

• Brisbane Zero: Brisbane Zero Campaign | Brisbane Zero
• Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) Specialist Homeless Services Collection

SHS clients with unmet need for long-term accommodation in FY 22-23

Used for DV population and prison numbers

• Riders Digest 2024 from Rider Levett Bucknall
• Weekly rents taken from SQM Research (SQM Research - Property - Weekly Rents – 6000):
• Subject matter expertise

Local stakeholders

National housing research by UNSW staff

Service costs from supportive housing in Australia such as Common Ground in Queensland

Financial Assumptions – Housing Market

• Extremely limited rental market – all or nearly all new supportive housing will need to be developed (not leased in existing units)
• Growing construction costs in Australia – increased cost by 20% based on upcoming figures coming from research
• Inflation – building in inflation at 2.5% a year

​

​

Financial Assumptions in Development: Rents

• Full market rate rents – although the expectation might be that not for profit providers would be providing housing and thus only charging 75% of market rate rents, in actuality this doesn’t cover the cost of running a property
• This is a known issue in Australia that we want to provide estimates on what it would take to mitigate the shortfall

​

• Tenant rent contribution – we know that supportive housing tenants will contribute 25-30% of their income to rent, but that they are likely to be making much less than the maximum.
• We are working to understand how to estimate a reasonable rent contribution based on local data

​

Timelines and Policy Development

• Short timelines – looking at five years of development planning given upcoming elections
• Policy support - Developing short policy papers with results and recommendations for supporting states developing supportive housing policy frameworks

​

Next Steps & Discussion

© All rights reserved. No utilization or reproduction of this material is allowed without the written permission of CSH.

​