Housing Australia CEO delivers keynote address at 4th Annual Affordable Housing Conference

Housing Australia CEO delivers keynote address at 4th Annual Affordable Housing Conference

On Wednesday 29 July 2026, Housing Australia CEO Scott Langford delivered the keynote Recalibrating Australia's Housing Ambitions Amid Cost Pressures, Policy Shifts and Delivery Constraints speech to attendees from across the housing continuum.

Good morning everyone and thank you for the opportunity to deliver today's opening keynote.

Before I begin, I want to acknowledge that we are meeting today on Gadigal land and pay my respects to Elders past and present.

I also acknowledge First Nations colleagues and leaders who are with us today.

Housing Australia is proud to be playing a role in advancing housing outcomes for First Nations Australians.

Just last week, our Investment Mandate was updated to include Closing the Gap targets, making it the first Commonwealth investment mandate to explicitly embed those objectives.

We are also proud to be supporting record levels of investment in First Nations housing and First Nations housing providers.

I would also like to acknowledge our many delivery partners from the community housing sector in the room today - as well as the developers, builders, financiers, and industry colleagues who are working with us to deliver new social and affordable housing.

The National Housing Accord's ambition to deliver 1.2 million new, well-located homes is founded on partnership between governments, industry and the housing sector.

This partnership is fundamental to improving housing outcomes for all Australians and is central to the work we do at Housing Australia.

Our focus is on the parts of the housing system where the private market cannot deliver alone and where public intervention makes the difference.

Driven by public purpose and applying a commercial mindset, we use financing, funding and guarantees to unlock more homes and more pathways to home ownership.

The Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) sets an ambitious target of 40,000 new social and affordable homes by 30 June 2029.

This ambition is significant: delivering 40,000 homes in 5 years effectively compresses 2 decades of historical supply into a single program cycle.

It represents one of the largest investments in social and affordable housing Australia has seen in generations.

But while we often talk about the numbers, I want to start somewhere else.

I want you to imagine a moment.

It's July 2029.

The key turns in the door of the 40,000th home delivered under the HAFF.

A young family walks through the front door of a safe, secure and affordable home.

Close to schools and childcare.

Close to transport.

Close to work.

Close to opportunity.

A place they can build their future.

Last week, I visited Boronia Apartments in Sydney with the Housing Australia Board.

It's a beautiful development delivered by City West Housing and funded through HAFF Funding Round 1, providing 74 social and affordable homes.

The apartments are filled with light.

The communal spaces are welcoming.

Most importantly, they provide safety, stability and opportunity for people who may previously have felt that all 3 were out of reach.

Now multiply that story 40,000 times.

Every front door.

Every family.

Every individual.

Every life changed through access to safe, secure housing.

That is why this matters.

But I would argue the HAFF has the potential to achieve something even bigger.

Not just 40,000 homes.

A stronger housing system.

Through the HAFF, we are working to catalyse partnerships and investment that will leave a lasting legacy.

With our delivery partners and housing enablers - the CHPs, developers, builders, lenders, all levels of government and professional services - we have an opportunity to work together differently.

When people talk about the HAFF, they often ask:

Can we deliver 40,000 homes?

Let me answer that. Yes.

The question is not whether we deliver.

The question is how.

How do we deliver safely?

How do we deliver efficiently?

How do we deliver in a challenging market?

How do we build lasting capability while we do it?

And we're seeing the how being demonstrated with delivery as the pipeline builds.

Success will not be measured solely by the number of homes we build.

It will also be measured by whether we leave behind a stronger sector, stronger partnerships and a stronger delivery system.

So let me pose a question to this audience.

If I am standing here again in July 2029, when we are celebrating the delivery of 40,000 homes, what will we say made the difference?

What role did each of us play?

How did we respond to rising construction costs, workforce constraints, supply chain pressures and financing challenges?

How did we step up and solve it together?

Firstly, we developed strong and impactful partnerships.

Many of you would be aware that we have already implemented 2 HAFF Funding Rounds to date.

As of 30 June 2026:

• 1,529 homes are complete
• Construction has commenced on 6,613 homes
• 6,839 homes are in pre-development, meaning they have planning approval and are about to commence construction and
• 3417 homes are in the planning stage.

So together, we are making progress, with delivery ramping up considerably over the next 12 months.

In designing Funding Round 3, we reflected carefully on what worked and what could be improved.

One of the keys to success we identified was strong partnerships.

Not partnerships for their own sake.

Partnerships that genuinely improve delivery outcomes.

So one of the key objectives in designing Funding Round 3, was to encourage impactful partnerships.

The reality is that today's development risks are becoming more complex.

Construction cost risk is no longer simply local.

Increasingly it is influenced by global supply chains, international markets and geopolitical uncertainty.

Managing those risks will be one of the defining challenges for housing delivery over the coming years.

The solution cannot be that government simply absorbs every risk.

Nor can it be that risk sits entirely with providers or developers.

The answer is that we work together to understand risks, allocate them appropriately and actively manage them down.

That requires trust.

It requires transparency.

And it requires a shared commitment to delivery.

Secondly, we unlocked the potential of private capital.

If we think about housing delivery as a system, there are 4 critical levers that need to work together.

The first is land - access to well-located land, supported by planning systems that enable housing to be delivered where it is needed.

The second is development - the capability of developers, builders and housing providers to bring projects from concept to completion.

The third is operations - the long-term ownership and management of homes to ensure they remain sustainable and continue serving communities for decades to come.

And the fourth is financing.

Housing Australia sits primarily within this fourth lever, working with partners to bring public and private capital together in ways that reduce financing costs, support project feasibility and unlock more homes.

The reason this matters is simple.

The scale of Australia's housing challenge exceeds the capacity of government funding alone.

Solving this challenge requires both public and private capital working together.

We have seen this model emerge globally in response to other complex, long-term challenges such as decarbonisation and the energy transition. Governments provide leadership, policy certainty and catalytic investment, while private capital provides the scale required to achieve meaningful system-wide change.

Housing is no different.

The National Housing Accord recognises this reality.

And the HAFF provides a practical model for making it happen.

To put the scale of the opportunity into perspective, if we assume an average development cost of around $700,000 per home, delivering 40,000 homes represents approximately $28 billion of investment flowing through Australia's housing system over 5 years.

No single participant can mobilise that level of investment alone.

Government has a role.

Industry has a role.

And capital has a role.

What makes the HAFF different is that it brings all 3 together.

Rather than relying solely on government grants, it combines government support, private finance and institutional investment within a single delivery model that aligns incentives across the housing ecosystem.

In doing so, it helps reduce pressure on public budgets, shares delivery risk across multiple participants and improves the attractiveness of social and affordable housing as an investment proposition.

But perhaps most importantly, it is helping build a market.

It is creating investment pathways that did not previously exist at this scale. It is helping community housing providers strengthen balance sheets, develop commercial capability and engage with larger pools of institutional capital.

In that sense, the HAFF is doing more than financing homes.

It is creating the conditions for long-term market transformation.

Because if we are serious about addressing Australia's housing challenge, we need more than government funding.

We need a system capable of repeatedly attracting land, development capability, operational expertise and capital at the scale required to keep delivering homes long into the future.

We also built efficiency and capability over time.

Together, HAFF Funding Rounds 1 and 2 have effectively locked in around 4 years' worth of Australia's historical social housing growth.

The 9,235 social housing dwellings contracted across the first 2 rounds are roughly equivalent to 4 years of Australia's average annual increase in social housing stock since 2014.

That is a significant achievement.

But just as importantly, those first 2 rounds have taught us valuable lessons about how to deliver housing at scale.

Funding Round 1 was establishing an entirely new national funding mechanism. It required Housing Australia and our delivery partners to create bespoke legal and commercial arrangements across hundreds of projects simultaneously.

It was complex, and it took time.

Round 2 demonstrated what can be achieved in partnerships with states and territory governments and industry.

Those lessons continue to shape our approach to Funding Round 3.

Since applications opened on 30 January, we have assessed proposals representing more than 40,000 dwellings.

Applications representing more than 14,000 dwellings have progressed to the Detailed Application Phase.

At the same time, Housing Australia continues to strengthen the systems, processes and capability needed to efficiently deliver a program of this scale.

One recent example is the introduction of a client manager model, providing community housing providers with a single point of contact across Housing Australia's funding and financing products.

The community housing sector is also evolving in response to the opportunities created by the HAFF.

We are seeing organisations adopt more sophisticated investment structures, engage with institutional capital, and attract people with experience in large-scale property development and delivery.

This evolution is critical.

Because a stronger community housing sector does more than deliver homes. It creates the capability needed to sustain delivery over the long term and to provide pathways for people to move along the housing continuum and thrive.

We have also learned that scaling housing delivery requires a broader ecosystem to evolve alongside the sector.

Significant capital is moving through the system in a relatively short period of time. That creates demand not only for housing providers, but also for planners, legal advisers, financiers, project managers and other professional services that support housing delivery.

A key lesson from the early HAFF rounds has been the importance of planning readiness and project sequencing.

Even well-conceived projects can face delays if planning approvals, site readiness, funding arrangements and delivery partners are not aligned from the outset.

That reinforces the importance of bringing forward the right projects at the right time, and ensuring community housing providers have the support and information needed to make those decisions with confidence.

And finally, we catalysed broader development by improving the investment case for new housing.

There's opportunities to manage risk together. To work differently rather than shove risk around between partners. For everyone to lean in and work out how to deliver.

Another promising opportunity is the ability to bring social housing, affordable housing and market-rate housing together within a single development.

At a time when construction costs remain elevated and development feasibility remains challenging, mixed-tenure projects can improve project viability and help unlock additional housing supply.

But the benefits extend well beyond financial outcomes.

Mixed-tenure developments support more diverse, inclusive and connected communities.

By bringing together households on different incomes within the same neighbourhood, they help avoid concentrations of disadvantage and create places where people feel a genuine sense of belonging.

A strong example is the Wirra-Mikangka development in Adelaide.

Delivered through a partnership between Housing Australia, the South Australian Government and Housing Choices Australia, the project comprises 151 homes, including 121 social and affordable homes alongside 30 market-rate dwellings.

What makes the project particularly significant is its demonstration that strong social outcomes and commercial viability can work hand in hand.

The market housing component contributes to project feasibility, while the social and affordable housing component delivers meaningful supply outcomes in a well-located inner-city community.

Projects such as Wirra-Mikanga show that mixed-tenure development is no longer simply a planning concept.

It is becoming a practical delivery model that supports scale, feasibility and long-term sustainability.

And ultimately, it is helping deliver more homes, stronger communities and better value from public investment.

The ambition of the HAFF has never been solely about delivering 40,000 homes.

It has always been about building a system capable of delivering many more.

Scaling housing supply can no longer be viewed simply as a question of governments bridging affordability gaps.

It is about building enduring capability across the entire housing ecosystem.

The HAFF is financing new homes today, but it is also helping establish the institutional, commercial and delivery frameworks that will sustain housing supply into the future.

When we reach 30 June 2029, we should absolutely think about the young family stepping through the front door of their new home for the first time.

Those moments matter.

But we should also be able to look back and see something larger.

A stronger community housing sector.

A more mature investment market.

A more capable delivery ecosystem.

And a housing system better equipped to help many more Australians access safe, secure and affordable housing.

Because the challenge before us is not simply to build homes.

It is to build the capability, partnerships and confidence required to keep building them for decades to come.

We can get this done.

Thank you.