{"id":818148,"date":"2026-07-23T06:07:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:07:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818148\/"},"modified":"2026-07-23T06:07:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T06:07:09","slug":"housing-australia-future-fund-audit-finds-4-of-homes-built","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/818148\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing Australia Future Fund Audit Finds 4% of Homes Built"},"content":{"rendered":"

Delivering Australia\u2019s 40,000 promised social and affordable homes has become a race against its own 2029 deadline, with the auditor-general counting just 1,432 delivered two years in. That is according to an audit of the $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund<\/a> released by the Australian National Audit Office on Tuesday<\/a>, which found Treasury designed the fund well but never took clear charge of delivery.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuying homes is not building homes,\u201d opposition housing spokesman Andrew Bragg said of a build rate<\/a> running at one new home a day, with 762 built by community housing providers and the other 670 newly built by private developers, then bought by a provider before, during, or immediately after development. The deeper fault, however, lies within Treasury, the audit found, with applications open from January 2024, while the department did not finalise most of the rules governing the program until May 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis program is being delivered in one of the toughest construction markets in decades,\u201d Housing Minister Clare O\u2019Neil said in accepting all five of the audit\u2019s recommendations<\/a>, arguing the report backed the fund\u2019s design and that Treasury saw cost pressures early. Her government now has 38,568 homes to deliver in 36 months, in a market where the wider 1.2 million home National Housing Accord is also tracking a year behind schedule.<\/p>\n

\"CompletedThe completed Cowper Street towers rise above Glebe\u2019s tree canopy, crowned by rooftop solar canopies that power Australia\u2019s first fully electrified social housing. (Photo Credit: Alicia Taylor)<\/p>\n

Building at the pace those numbers demand is what timber has proven possible, with NSW\u2019s first mass timber social housing<\/a> swapping 19 ageing dwellings in Glebe for 75 new homes, its pair of eight-storey CLT towers raising floors in as little as a fortnight. Opened in March for Homes NSW, The King\u2019s Trust Australia, and Bridge Housing, the $65 million Cowper Street project is exactly the apartment-format community housing providers must now deliver at scale.<\/p>\n

\u201cExceptional clients, exceptional risk tolerance, and exceptional fees,\u201d GroupGSA\u2019s Noura Thaha, the architect behind those towers, said, cannot remain the price of timber social housing. Her Fifth Estate contribution this month<\/a> revealed every element of the Glebe design needed separate, costly Performance Solutions, because the National Construction Code still offers no Deemed-to-Satisfy route for exposed CLT apartments, leaving project teams to pay to solve the same problems twice.<\/p>\n

It comes as IndustryEdge\u2019s Tim Woods told May\u2019s FTMA National Conference that mid-rise, the format that barrier holds back, had overtaken detached housing<\/a> as the building type driving Australia\u2019s housing growth, with 225,000 dwellings a year needed by 2034 and the frame and truss sector losing share in a market it built. Answering that, the Future Framing Initiative is testing standard timber framing to 15 metres and four to five storeys, with the Australian Timber Development Association\u2019s Andrew Dunn steering the results toward the 2028 National Construction Code and the mid-rise standard it still lacks.<\/p>\n

\"FourThe Future Framing Initiative panel at FTMA\u2019s National Conference, where research lead Professor Louise Wallis outlined work testing the existing timber stick to a 15-metre upper bound. (Photo Credit: Supplied by FTMA to Wood Central)<\/p>\n

The market is already contracted, with Housing Australia listing 279 committed projects covering 18,650 homes across the fund\u2019s first two rounds, and Round 3 has been open since 30 January<\/a> to fund the last 21,350. Converting them is the program\u2019s problem, with the social housing waitlist climbing from 155,000 to 169,000 in the decade to June 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cFaster, safer and higher-quality housing, all made here,\u201d is how AFWI Executive Director Dr Joseph Lawrence has described the goal of a connected fibre value chain<\/a>, with the $200 million-plus research institute now running 30 projects from tree breeding through to engineered wood. On the auditor-general\u2019s numbers, the fund must deliver nearly 27 times what it managed in its first two years in the next three years.<\/p>\n

\"J <\/p>\n

Jason Ross, publisher, is a 15-year professional in building and construction, connecting with more than 400 specifiers. A Gottstein Fellowship recipient, he is passionate about growing the market for wood-based information. Jason is Wood Central’s in-house emcee and is available for corporate host and MC services.<\/p>\n


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