August 2026

Australia added just 56 homes in the public and community housing space last year, according to the Productivity Commission.

With homelessness growing and the waiting lists for community housing rising weekly, the nation managed to grow the number of homes available by just 56 in 12 months.

In FY2025, almost 300,000 people sought help from the government-funded network Specialist Homelessness Services, which reported around 35,000 people are sleeping rough on a typical night. The failure of government to address the shortage of social housing is a key part of the problem.

Barbara Pocock, a Member of Australia Greens, has been a Senator for South Australia since 2022. She recently posted on social media her questioning of Dr Danielle Wood, chair of the Productivity Commission, at a Senate hearing.

Her basic question was: “How many public and community homes have been added in the past year?”

The answer: 56 homes in the public and community housing space added across the whole country in 12 months – that’s between 2024 and 2025.

Wood said: “That’s the total increase across the different categories – that covers public housing, state owned and managed indigenous housing, and community housing.”

Senator Pocock commented: “This government is not solving the housing crisis, they are treading water while waiting lists burst at the seams. This Federal Government is taking tiny steps in a race against a public and social housing waiting list which is running at full pace.”

When you add the failure of HAFF (the Housing Australia Future Fund), which is reported elsewhere on bureaucracybeat.com, it portrays a government which is utterly failing to deal with the plight of homeless people and other disadvantaged citizens in a nation which is falling desperately short of the number of dwellings needed.