Housing Affordability Fund (HAF)
Background
The Housing Affordability Fund will invest up to $512 million over five years to lower the cost of building new homes.The Fund's focus is on proposals that improve the supply of new housing and make housing more affordable for home buyers entering the market. It will address two significant barriers to the supply of housing:
- Holding costs incurred by developers as a result of long planning and approval waiting times
- Infrastructure costs, such as water, sewerage, transport, and open space
The Fund will target greenfield and infill developments where high dwelling demand currently exists or is forecast. Proposals will be assessed against transparent, needs-based selection criteria with priority given to proposals that improve the supply of new moderately priced housing and demonstrate how cost savings are passed on to new home buyers.
A Consultation Paper, launched in Sydney on 11 June 2008 by Acting Prime Minister, the Hon Julia Gillard and Minister for Housing Tanya Plibersek, outlined the proposed design of the Housing Affordability Fund, including the process for selecting suitable projects. The consultation process ended on 17 July 2008. Details about the documentation and the process are available on the HAF Consultation Paper page.
Expressions of Interest
On Monday 15 September, the Prime Minister, the Hon Kevin Rudd MP and the Minister for Housing the Hon Tanya Plibersek MP announced the first round of Expressions of Interest for the Housing Affordability Fund (the Fund).The application round closed at 5.00pm on Wednesday 15 October 2008.
- The Housing Affordability Fund Guidelines - [PDF 2MB] | [RFT 165 kB]
Applications are currently being assessed and successful applicants will be notified by December 2008.
The Round Two Expression of Interest process is scheduled to occur in March/April 2009.
Questions and Answers
All queries about the Housing Affordability Fund should be emailed to the Housing Affordability Fund mailbox haf@fahcsia.gov.au or posted to:Manager
Housing Affordability Fund
Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs
Athllon Drive
TUGGERANONG ACT 2900
Answers to questions sent to the Housing Affordability Fund mailbox will be made available on the Housing Affordability Fund Questions and Answers page.
Electronic Development Assessment (eDA)
The Australian Government has committed $30 million from the Housing Affordability Fund to develop the IT infrastructure and software needed to implement electronic development assessment (eDA) systems nationally. Improvements in eDA processes will reduce delays in planning approvals, which in turn produces savings for home buyers. There is no selection process for eDA: instead funds have been allocated to each jurisdiction based on their proportion of new dwellings. New South Wales will receive almost $6 million, Victoria and Queensland around $6.5 million each, South Australia almost $1.8 million, and Western Australia over $3.8 million. The three smallest jurisdictions - Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory will each receive $500,000.A further $3.6 million has been allocated to develop and implement national standards for eDA IT systems - the electronic development assessment interoperability specifications, or eDAIS. This will ensure that all the IT systems involved in development assessments are able to talk to each other. FaHCSIA has asked State Government Planning Departments and Local Government Associations to work collaboratively to identify how the funds can best deliver end-to-end eDA processes targeting high growth areas.
Applications for eDA funding will not be accepted under the Housing Affordability Fund funding rounds. Further information on the eDA funding process will be provided independently of this consultation process.