Summary

This report presents data from the 2007-08 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) private rent assistance data collection. Private rent assistance supplements the assistance provided to households by the Australian Government Rent Assistance program as part of Centrelink payments.

Recipients

In 2007-08, private rent assistance was provided to 122,036 households in Australia across a range of program types including bond loans, rental grants/subsidies/relief, relocation expenses and other one-off assistance grants. Information on Indigenous households assisted was only available for New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory. Among the 71,011 households assisted in these states during 2007-08, 7,747 (11%) were Indigenous households.

How assistance was provided

Of the $82 million provided in assistance, about $46.7 million was in bond loans, and $24.7 million in rental grants, subsidies and relief payments. This compares with $77.4 million in the previous year, $46.6 million of which was provided in bond loans, and $23.7 million in rental grants, subsidies and relief payments.

Some data limitations

There is considerable variability across jurisdictions in terms of program guidelines and coverage of CSHA private rent assistance. As a result, despite the development and agreement of standard national data definitions, the data derived are less comparable than for the major national programs such as public rental housing and community housing. Nonetheless, the available information provides a valuable resource for understanding the characteristics of these programs across all jurisdictions.

Also, information for all four private rent assistance programs were not provided by all jurisdictions, therefore national totals include only jurisdictions for which data are available.