Affordable Housing in Australia: The Neoliberalisation of Subsidised Rental Housing

Abstract Australia, like many countries across the Global North, has experienced declining housing affordability in the wake of widespread neoliberal restructuring rolled out from the 1970s. Over this period, ‘affordable housing’—a new form of subsidised below-market rental housing—emerged as a policy response to growing housing inequality, while maintaining neoliberal policy logics. By tracing the post-war history of Australian housing policy, we examine the conditions which gave rise to the affordable housing sector—originally envisioned as one that would fill the gap between an expensive private rental sector and an increasingly residualised public housing system. We then explore three case studies to illustrate how affordable housing schemes have been shaped by processes of privatisation, financialisation, and assetisation. We reveal that, despite being positioned as a response to housing inequality, affordable housing provision—its quantity, location, price, and duration—is shaped by the financial objectives of private actors and fails to deliver for those most in need of housing. We argue that more critical engagement with neoliberal forms of subsidised rental housing is required to challenge the current model and to better meet contemporary housing needs.