Special needs and time waited
Households seeking assistance from social housing providers often have members with special needs. Some households may have multiple special needs. The definition of special needs is different for different social housing programs. For more detailed information, see Priority groups section.
In 2020–21, the time special needs households waited for an allocation of public housing varied, with around (Table HOUSEHOLDS.20):
- 2,200 (24%) households waited for less than 3 months
- 2,600 (28%) households waited between 3 months and less than 1 year
- 3,600 (38%) households waited between 1 year to less than 5 years, and
- 1,000 (or 10%) households waited for more than 5 years.
Number of bedrooms and time waited
The time waited for social housing allocation varied depending upon the number of bedrooms required by a household and by program. For public housing allocations in 2020–21, the proportion of newly allocated households decreased with increasing bedroom numbers (around 40% for 1 bedroom, 30% for 2 bedrooms, 25% for 3 bedrooms and 4% for 4 or more bedrooms). Despite this, the amount of time waited was similar regardless of the number of bedrooms (Table HOUSEHOLDS.22).
In contrast to public housing, a greater proportion of SOMIH households received housing with 3 bedrooms (21%) or 4 or more bedrooms (57%) in 2020–21 (Table HOUSEHOLDS.22). This difference in housing allocation partly reflects the different housing needs of SOMIH households and differences in the housing stock (Memmott et al. 2012).
Households exiting social housing
Social housing 'Exits' refers to households that have exited a specific housing program during the reference year. Households that relocate within the same housing program are not considered ‘exits’, but instead, ‘transfers’.
Households may exit social housing for a variety of reasons. Some households exit because of changes to their housing or neighbourhood needs, such as those related to location, size, or neighbourhood safety (Johnson et al. 2019). Whereas others exit social housing for financial or forced reasons, including employment opportunities, entry into home ownership, eviction, or ineligibility due to an increase in income (Baker et al. 2020, 2021). In this way, reasons influencing households exits from social housing can be both positive and negative (Wiesel et al. 2014). While exiting households most commonly enter the private rental market, some also enter home ownership or other tenure types, such as employer provided housing (Baker et al. 2020; Bentley et al. 2018), however, this information is not captured in the datasets informing this report.
In 2020–21, exits from public housing and SOMIH decreased compared to previous years, with around 16,400 public housing households and 900 SOMIH households having exited. Across the states and territories, New South Wales (5,224 entries and 5218 exits), Queensland (3,614 entries and 3,236 exits) and the Northern Territory (331 entries and 292 exits) had more new allocations to public housing than exits from public housing (Tables HOUSEHOLDS.10 and 25).
In 2020–21, fewer households exited SOMIH (900) than the previous three years (ranging from 1,000 to 1,300 between 2017–18 and 2019–20). The number of households exiting SOMIH in 2020–21 was similar to the number of newly allocated households (1,000) (Table HOUSEHOLDS.23).
Households transferring dwellings
Transfers occur when occupants move to a vacant dwelling in the same social housing program. Transfers may be initiated by either the tenant (including a mutual swapping of properties between eligible tenants) or housing provider in response to a change in circumstance or housing need. This may include household composition changes (such as overcrowding or underutilisation), a medical condition or because of stock renewal and re-development. Transfer eligibility and implementation varies by jurisdiction.
During 2020–21, 3% of public housing households and 2% of SOMIH households transferred—or were relocated—to a different dwelling within the same housing program (Table HOUSEHOLDS.25).
In 2020–21, the proportion of household transfers were similar across the states and territories (2–4%). New South Wales (2,200 households), Victoria (1,800 households) and Queensland (1,300 households) had the highest number of transfers, and the Northern Territory had the highest proportion of transfers (4.2% or 210 households) (Figure TRANSFERS AND EXITS.1; Table HOUSEHOLDS.25).