The Australian federal budget 2025 was handed down two weeks ago on Tuesday 25 March. It was deemed a ‘cost-of-living’ budget, with measures like tax cuts for lower income households, energy bill relief, and strengthening and expanding Medicare aimed at making life a little less hard for people and families feeling the pinch.  

While these measures for lower income households are welcome, the budget had very little aimed at the housing crisis and specifically designed to support people experiencing homelessness, housing stress, or otherwise living in inadequate housing. With housing being the biggest cost borne by most households, rapidly increasing rents and housing stress, and homelessness at record levels, we at Shelter NSW had hoped to see more ambitious action and investment from the Australian Government. 

The expansion of the ‘Help to Buy’ scheme does little for people living on lower incomes. It will mostly assist people who would have managed to buy a house at some stage to get in the market earlier. Tax concessions to support ‘build-to-rent’ developments are welcome, and will unlock up to 80,000 dwellings of much needed rental supply across the country, but build-to-rent developments remain largely a premium product. Shelter also welcomes Commonwealth investment of over $50 million dollars in developing ‘modern methods of construction’ such as prefabricated and modular housing designs. You can hear more from John Engeler, Shelter NSW CEO, in the Sydney Alliance ‘Budget report back’. This shows the interest and commitment of the Australian Government to address the housing crisis.  

In news closer to home, as previously announced in our newsletter, the budget included $6.2 million over three years for housing and homelessness peak bodies to coordinate sector research, advocacy, capacity building and information. This is very welcome news as our federal counterparts at National Shelter have been tirelessly working for better housing and homelessness policy, legislation and service delivery without any government funding for over ten years. 

We would have liked, however, to see a lot more being done to support lower income households experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

Our National Shelter federal policy priorities remain the same; investment at scale in social and affordable housing of $1 billion annually in the short to medium term, an immediate increase of Commonwealth Rent Assistance followed by a review, and reform of the taxation settings that encourage speculation and favour investors over home buyers (i.e. negative gearing and capital gains tax discounts).  

This being said, let’s keep in mind this was no ordinary budget. It was delivered in the midst of an election campaign where housing is one of the central, deciding policy issues. Shelter NSW expects that there will be more announcements being made by the Australian Government, the Opposition, and other political parties about their housing policies and proposed solutions to the housing affordability and homelessness crisis.  

So, stay tuned, keep hope, and continue advocating for the solutions we need to create a better housing system for all.