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National

RMIT ABC Fact Check

The NSW Coalition said it 'slashed' the social housing waitlist. Is that correct?

Coalition Matt Kean Labor Fact Check Productivity Commission Chris Minns Hal Pawson RMIT ABC University of New South Wales New South Wales

Has the social housing waitlist really been "slashed" under the NSW Coalition? Here's what we found (ABC News: Matt Kean, 7.30)

The claim

As the Reserve Bank lifts interest rates and the cost of renting climbs, the issue of affordable housing has featured in the NSW election campaign.

New South Wales Treasurer Matt Kean defended the Coalition's record after Labor pointed to official data showing an increase in the number of people waiting for social housing.

"What Labor's not telling you is the waitlist was higher under them," Mr Kean tweeted on January 10. "We've slashed that waitlist and set up a $1.1bn social and affordable housing fund to deliver thousands of new homes."

So, has the Coalition slashed the social housing waiting list since coming to power?

RMIT ABC Fact Check crunches the numbers.

The verdict

A housing development in Oran Park, south-west Sydney. (ABC News: Ross Byrne)

Mr Kean's claim to have "slashed" the waitlist is exaggerated.

Experts contacted by Fact Check agreed that data published annually by the Productivity Commission was the most authoritative source for assessing the social housing waitlist.

According to this data, the number of people on the waitlist fell by just 0.2 per cent to 52,243 between June 30, 2010 (when Labor was last in power) and June 30, 2022 (the date of the latest available data).

Across the Coalition's 12-year tenure, the number has fluctuated between 45,429 (2021) and 59,031 (2016).

Importantly, experts cautioned that, due to one-off administrative changes such as the tightening of eligibility criteria and the reclassification of applicants, falls in the number of social housing applicants did not necessarily mean that demand for such housing was being met.

What exactly is social housing?

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns tweeted that huge waitlists put "thousands at imminent risk of homelessness". (AAP: Bianca De Marchi)

Mr Kean made his claim in response to a tweet by NSW Labor leader Chris Minns about the "social housing" waitlist.

According to the NSW government, social housing is defined as "secure and affordable rental housing for people on low incomes with housing needs" and includes "public, community and Aboriginal housing".

Public housing is managed by the state, while community housing is managed by non-government providers. Housing specifically for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people can be managed by either government or community providers.

Applicants can apply for social housing via the NSW Housing Register, which maintains a single list of approved applicants awaiting some form of social housing.

The available data

Fact Check invited Mr Kean's office to provide the basis for his claim but had not received a response ahead of publication.

However, experts contacted by Fact Check agreed that the Productivity Commission's annual Report on Government Services provided the best available comparative data on social housing waiting lists in NSW.

The commission reports figures separately for public, social and Aboriginal housing but warns against combining them as applicants can apply for more than one of these streams.

In view of this, Hal Pawson, professor of Housing Research and Policy at the University of New South Wales, recommended using figures for "public housing" as a proxy for the "social housing" waitlist.

This information is published annually, with data available from 1998 to 2022.

Nominating a base year

The Productivity Commission data provides a snapshot of the waitlist as it stands on June 30 each year. It does not show fluctuations in the list over the course of a year.

So, while Labor was in power until March 2011, the last snapshot during its time in government was taken in June 2010.

The first snapshot under the Coalition was taken in June 2011, just three months after it took office.

Professor Pawson told Fact Check that, despite its short time in power, the incoming government would still have had an opportunity to affect the waitlist.

"It's more than possible that an undeclared adjustment to the registration rules could have influenced the June 30, 2011 figure — potentially in a substantial way," he said.

The Coalition's record

Mr Kean said the Coalition had "slashed" the social housing waitlist since coming to power.

The data shows that between 2010 (the last audit under Labor) and 2022 (the most recent audit), the waitlist eased very slightly — from 52,348 to 52,243 people. This represents a reduction of 0.2 per cent under the Coalition.

During that time, however, the waitlist rose and fell, hitting a peak of 59,031 people in 2016 and a low of 45,429 in 2021.

The ups and downs throughout the Coalition's time in office amounted to an annual average change in the waitlist of 0.3 per cent.

How does Labor compare?

While Mr Kean referred to the waitlist being "higher" under Labor, a lack of data for Labor's first three years in office (1995 to 1997) makes it difficult to assess the previous government's record.

Further complicating historical comparisons, the Productivity Commission altered its definitions from 2008 to exclude "transfer applications", where applicants already in social housing were seeking to move to another property.

Professor Pawson explained that "applicants in those circumstances do not represent ‘net demand' for social housing because if they are enabled to move through a tenancy offer that will also create a new lettable vacancy in their former home".

Data for Labor's last three years — that is, those after the 2008 change and based on the annual Productivity Commission figures — shows that there were, on average, 45,002 people per year waiting for social housing.

This compares with an average of 51,882 a year over the Coalition's term (2011 to 2022).

The earlier data, while not directly comparable, suggests Labor presided for several years over a large but shrinking social housing waitlist.

A useful measure of need?

Chart Source: UNSW City Futures Research Centre

While politicians might be keen to trumpet falls in the number of people waiting for social housing, experts cautioned that such decreases did not necessarily mean demand was being met.

Professor Alan Morris, of the University of Technology Sydney's Institute for Public Policy and Governance, told Fact Check that the number of people applying for social housing had been cut at various times in NSW due to significant tightening of the eligibility criteria.

A 2011 research paper published by the NSW Parliamentary Library noted that a big fall in the housing waitlist between 2005 and 2006 (under Labor) was, according to a key advocacy group, "mainly due to a tightening of eligibility criteria, and reviews of the status of previous applicants".

Similarly, a 2021 analysis of social housing conducted by UNSW researchers attributed part of a 2017 reduction in the state's housing list (under the Coalition) to a change in counting rules, whereby "suspended applicants were no longer counted in waiting list figures".

Suspended applications are those deemed "inactive" by the Department of Communities and Justice for reasons including failure to respond to requests for further information, incarceration, hospitalisation or a failure to comply with agreed debt repayments from a former social housing property.

Professor Morris also noted that, counterintuitively, an increase in social housing can actually increase waitlists, as happened under the federal Labor government in the 1990s.

That's because more people apply when they "think there is a possibility of accessing social housing", he said, adding that fewer people submitted applications when supply was scarce and waitlists were already long.

In a separate UNSW report published in 2022, researchers compared other metrics such as rental stress and homelessness to the social housing waitlist at a national level concluding: "Australia is subject to a shortage of social housing that has been increasing over time, at a far greater rate than social housing waiting list numbers suggest."

Principal researcher: Sonam Thomas

factcheck@rmit.edu.au