More than 400,000 households across the land down under are benefiting from different social housing programs since 2009.

A report from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) shows 81 percent of the 406,000 households assisted by social housing were in public rental housing, while 9 percent were in mainstream community housing or social housing managed by the not-for-profit sector.

AIHW Housing Unit head Kate Mallen said, “We do find that public housing in particular is very low, only two per cent of dwellings were overcrowded in public housing... We do find that overcrowding was more prominent in remote and very remote areas.”

Mallen said, “over 170,000 households were on waiting lists for public rental housing” in 2009.

“Occupancy rates are over 90 percent and what we do find is that across social housing allocations, allocations to housing places are increasingly rationed - over 60 percent of newly assisted households to public housing were considered in high need,” the housing unit head stressed.

The AIHW report provides a profile of social housing in Australia under the 2003 – 2008 Commonwealth State Housing Agreement (CSHA) and the first six months of the National Affordable Housing Agreement (NAHA). The NAHA was introduced in January 2009 but most initiatives under agreement took effect after June last year.