The aim of housing assistance is to overcome the problems that households face in obtaining or retaining suitable accommodation, whether due to cost, availability or adequacy, and to provide households with the flexibility to meet changing demand.
In Australia housing assistance is provided by a variety of government agencies at a national, state and territory levels. Over the years, an information infrastructure has been developed to support the collection of nationally consistent and comparable data on housing needs and assistance provided. This infrastructure includes:
A national agreement to collect data consistent with national data standards
A nationally agreed approval process for data standards based on review by national committees
Regular publication of nationally endorsed data standards
