• Housing assistance, Superseded 10/05/2019

The Community Housing (CH) data set specification defines information about community housing organisations (CHOs), the dwellings they manage and the tenants assisted.

Community housing is rental housing provided for low to moderate income or special needs households, managed by community-based organisations that have received capital or recurrent subsidy from government. Community housing models vary across jurisdictions, and the housing stock may be owned by a variety of groups including government.

Community housing includes all tenancy (rental) units under management of a community housing organisation (excluding Indigenous community housing organisations).

The CH data set specification excludes dwellings:

• managed under:
  • public rental housing
  • state/territory owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH)
  • the Crisis Accommodation Program.
• no longer under the administration of the CHO at 30 June of the reference year (including dwellings demolished, sold or otherwise disposed of); and
• not yet available to the CHO at 30 June of the reference year (including those still under construction or being purchased).

Dwelling, Tenancy rental unit,Household and Service provider organisation.

National reporting arrangements

State and territory housing authorities provide the data to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) for national collation on an annual basis. Data are sourced from CHOs via surveys, the jurisdiction's administrative systems, and dwelling audits conducted by state/territory housing authorities.

Periods for which data are collected and nationally collated

The reference period starts on 1 July and ends on 30 June each financial year. The reference period for this collection is the financial year for which the data were collected: 2013-14, 2014-15 and so forth. Limited financial information from the previous financial year is also collected.

While approved as the national standard, some details are not presented in accordance with best practice standards for metadata published as national standards in METeOR. Improvements may be made to the presentation of the metadata in the future; however they will not affect the meaning of the metadata or the interpretation of data collected using the metadata.

Glossary items

Glossary terms that are relevant to this data set specification include:

Boarding house building

Boarding house room

Boarding house unit

Canadian National Occupancy Standard

Disability

Family

Geographic indicator

Greatest need

Head-leased dwelling (government)

Head-leased dwelling (private)

Homeless

Homelessness

Household

Housing administrator

Tenancy composition

Tenancy rental unit

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) 2014. Community housing data collection, processing and data manuals. Canberra: AIHW.