Description

All states and territories provide a range of public housing programs and maintain administrative data sets about these programs. Extracts of these data sets are provided annually to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). This collection contains information about public housing (PH) dwellings, households assisted and households on the waiting list. Data are provided for the following two reference periods: 2023–24 financial year and point in time at 30 June 2024.

Summary

• The data collected are an administrative by-product of the management of PH programs run by the states and territories and conform well in terms of scope, coverage and reference period.
• The administrative data sets from which this collection is drawn have inaccuracies to varying degrees, including missing data, out-of-date data and data coding or recording errors.
• Care is required when comparing outputs across states and territories. Differences in the data collected and which records are included or excluded from a calculation, can affect the coherence of the outputs. Coherence over time has also been affected by changes in methodology (see ‘coherence’ section for details).

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is an independent corporate Commonwealth entity under the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Act 1987 (AIHW Act), governed by management board and accountable to the Australian Parliament through the Health portfolio.

The AIHW is a nationally recognised information management agency. Its purpose is to create authoritative and accessible information and statistics that inform decisions and improve the health and welfare of all Australians.

Compliance with the confidentiality requirements in the AIHW Act, the Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth), and AIHW's data governance arrangements ensures that the AIHW is well positioned to release information for public benefit while protecting the identity of individuals and organisations.

For further information, see the AIHW website, which includes details about the AIHW's governance and role and strategic goals.

The AIHW receives, compiles, edits and verifies the data in collaboration with states and territories. The finalised data sets are signed off by the states and territories and used by the AIHW for reporting, analysis and approved ad hoc data requests. Requests for jurisdiction-level data must be signed off by the relevant state or territory.

The reference period for the PH collection is based on the financial year (ending 30 June). The specific reference period for these data is 2023–24.

Analysis of data from this collection is reported in the AIHW's annual Housing assistance in Australia reports and the Productivity Commission's annual Report on government services.

Users can request data not available online or in reports (subject to the AIHW's confidentiality policy and state and territory approval) via the AIHW’s online data request system. Depending on the nature of the request, access to unpublished data may incur costs or require approval from the AIHW Ethics Committee.

General enquiries about the AIHW publications can be directed to [email protected].

Metadata and definitions relating to this data source can be found in the Public Housing and State Owned and Managed Indigenous Housing (PH & SOMIH) data set specification 2018-.

Supplementary information can be found in the housing collection data manuals which are available upon request from [email protected].

The data collected are an administrative by-product of the management of public housing programs run by the states and territories and conform well in terms of scope, coverage and reference period.

Classifications used for income, disability status, greatest need and vacancy reason are not consistent across the states and territories, however, the states and territories map these data to an AIHW standard as defined in METEOR.

There are known accuracy issues with the data collected:

• The administrative data sets from which this collection is drawn have inaccuracies to varying degrees including missing data, out-of-date data and data coding or recording errors.
• Not all states and territories capture all data items. For those outputs that are calculated using gross income, New South Wales and South Australia use assessable income instead. (Assessable income is the income amount used to establish eligibility for housing assistance and each jurisdiction uses its own definition of assessable income.) In addition, disability status is derived using the receipt of a disability pension as a proxy in Victoria. New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, Tasmania and the Australian Capital Territory reference payment type as well as other information.
• Information about disability is not reported under eligibility requirements in some jurisdictions.
• Indigenous status is self-identified and not reported under eligibility requirements in some jurisdictions.
• Most states and territories do not update income information for non-rebated households, that is, households who pay the market rent value of the dwellings. Therefore, some household income information may be coded as missing or not reflect current income levels. Outputs that require income information do not include households with missing income and therefore may not be complete.
• All jurisdictions have a form of integrated waitlist across social housing programs. Waitlist data are reported separately for each social housing program applied for. Counting rules for the number of applicants for any given program may vary across jurisdictions.

State- and territory-specific issues:

New South Wales

• Since a system change in 2010, New South Wales continues to report problems encountered when linking files containing date variables within their system. This may occur when linking ‘dwelling history’, ‘household’ and ‘waitlist’ files. Where date variables contradict between files, they are recoded as missing.
• In 2022–23, New South Wales reported that income information is more complete and comprehensive meaning an improvement in data quality.
• Income details are only updated for rebated households, that is, 92% of all households.

Victoria

• Income details are only updated for rebated households, that is, 88% of all households.
• Victoria does not collect current rent paid for waitlist applicants and are therefore unable to determine households who are in greatest need due to very high housing costs. These factors lead to an undercount of greatest needs allocations.
• The first name and surname components used to calculate the statistical linkage key (SLK) were not provided.

Queensland

• Income details are only updated for rebated households, that is, 95% of all households.
• There is one waiting list for all social housing in Queensland. Applicants for the PH program may also be reported in the community housing waitlist data. Applicants eligible for both the PH and state owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH) programs are reported only in the SOMIH waitlist data.
• Market rent is only current for occupied dwellings.

Western Australia

• Indigenous data is voluntarily recorded and known to be an undercount. However, recording of Indigenous status is more accurate for priority applications, resulting in higher counts of confirmed Indigenous households than in previous years.
• Income details are only updated for rebated households, that is, 93% of all households.
• Western Australia does not collect current rent paid for waitlist applicants and are therefore unable to determine households who are in greatest need due to very high housing costs. These factors lead to an undercount of greatest need allocations.
• In some cases, greatest need date is not recorded and is assumed to be the application date.

South Australia

• Income details are not updated for most non-rebated households. 
• Housing SA did not supply the ‘dwelling history’ file for 2023–24, which includes the variables necessary for the calculation of turnaround time.

Australian Capital Territory

• Income details are only updated for rebated households, that is, 91% of households.
• The first name and surname components used to calculate SLK were not provided.
• Relationship status for household members is not consistently recorded resulting in a number of unknown values for overcrowding and underutilisation measures.

States and territories may publish their own analysis of public housing data which may vary in scope from this collection.

Data for individual states and territories may not be comparable to previous years due to changes in systems and processes which have led to differences in the accuracy and completeness of the data over time. Differences between states and territories concerning social housing management systems, incomplete or missing information, out-of-date information and coding errors can affect the coherence of the outputs.

Coherence over time has also been affected by changes in methodology:

• From 2022–23, remoteness area (RA) is determined using a concordance between 2022 postcodes and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) 2021 RA classification. From 2018–19 to 2021–22, a concordance between 2018 postcodes and the ASGS 2016 RA classification was used. For 2017–18, a concordance between 2017 postcodes and the ASGS 2016 RA classification was used. Previous years used a concordance between 2012 postcodes and the ASGS 2011 RA classification. Care is therefore required when comparing remoteness data across time.
• Low-income cut-offs are obtained from the biennial ABS Survey of Income and Housing (SIH). From 2021–22, low-income cut-offs are based on 2019–20 SIH results. Care is required when comparing low-income measures over time.

State and territory government housing authorities’ bedroom entitlement policies may differ from the Canadian National Occupancy Standard (CNOS) which is used in dwelling utilisation calculations.

State- and territory-specific issues:
New South Wales

• From 2011–12, previous rent charged is not a mandatory field to be provided by new tenants in their application for housing assistance. As a result, the number of new allocations to households in greatest need is underestimated due to the exclusion of households with very high rental housing costs.
• In 2017–18, around 1,000 dwellings identified for disposal and another 1,000 dwellings leased to a community organisation were reported for the first time. Person information is not available for these dwellings.
• Prior to 2022–23, data on ‘number of Indigenous households at 30 June’ were under-reported in the system.  These data were substituted with estimates from the ABS census.

Queensland

• There was a major system change in 2019–20. This affected the following:
  • Migration issues meant Queensland were unable to report household income for some households.
  • Changes to the categorisation of vacancy reason.
  • Identifiers (for example, dwelling and household ID) are not consistent with previous years meaning descriptors related to sustaining a tenancy for 12 months or more could not be calculated.
  • The methodology for differentiating between PH and SOMIH applications changed.
  • The methodology for collecting greatest need information changed.
  • Application date is now the initial application date. Previously, this was updated if an applicant changed situation/category.
• In 2021–22, all vacant dwellings have been included regardless of their vacancy reason. Prior to 2021–22, vacant properties such as inactive, sale approved, purchase of existing property, were excluded.

Western Australia

• In 2021–22, there were some changes made to the mapping of multiple priority reasons to greatest need reasons that may impact data consistency.
• Inconsistent recording of dwelling vacancy dates and vacancy reasons impacts the accuracy of turnaround time calculations. From 2021–22, these data were substituted with information to match Western Australia’s internal systems.
• Prior to 2023–24, disability was only recorded if it contributed to housing needs, meaning many people with disability were not identified and as a result, special needs allocations were undercounted. From 2023–24, receipt of the Disability Support Pension was also used to identify people with disability. 

South Australia

• Since 2012–13, Housing SA has not provided the ‘dwelling history’ file which includes the variables necessary for the calculation of turnaround time.
• In April 2020, Housing SA implemented a new data collection system. A number of data migration errors and coding changes in the new system led to reporting errors or an inability to provide items in 2019–20. In particular:
  • Dwelling and tenancy details were unable to be provided for some PH dwellings.
  • Income unit identifier was not provided.
  • Greatest need is likely to be an undercount due to a data migration error.
  • South Australia was unable to distinguish between greatest need reasons. For greatest need households, greatest need reason was reported as homeless (code 1) in 2019–20.

However, data cleansing before migration to the new system resulted in better data quality and less missing information regarding bedroom and/or required bedroom details.

• From April 2020, eligible applicants for SOMIH were registered for both the PH and SOMIH programs. These applicants are reported only in the SOMIH waitlist data.
• In 2021–22, South Australia reported an increase in the collection and reliability of incomes for non-rebated households.