17/05/2026
As you all would know, the Federal Budget was released this week, and housing was front and centre. The government moved on negative gearing and capital gains tax discount, put $2 billion toward the infrastructure that lets new homes get built, and committed around $60 million to a new National Youth Housing Supplement to help about 4,000 young people at risk of homelessness into community housing.
This is absolutely steps in the right direction, and comes after years of advocacy from the housing and homelessness sector.
Unfortunately though, the Budget did not put new money into building social and community housing. You cannot end homelessness without homes. Changing a tax in 2027 doesn't do anything for the person sleeping in a tent tonight.
The public debate is mainly centred around one question: will tax reform push house prices up or down? That's the wrong question. The real one is what we choose to build with the increased tax money.
I want to point you towards some people who have been talking about this for years. Everybody's Home Campaign is a national campaign to fix the housing crisis. They have spent years building the evidence.
Their "People's Commission into the Housing Crisis" gathered more than 1,500 submissions from Australian's living this - ordinary people and frontline organisations - and turned those voices into a clear call for government to act. Their recent research keeps doing the same work: "Breaking Point" and "No Way Out" have real numbers and real stories about what's happening in homes and in services across the country.
Everybody's Home's response to this Budget makes one simple point: the changes the government made prove that the policy choices which created this crisis can be undone. The youth housing supplement proves this. It happened because people kept making the case, year after year. Advocacy is slow, but it works.
The job is nowhere near finished. But there are people doing it well, and they deserve your attention. Go and read their work. Follow them. Support them if you can: everybodyshome.com.au.
The more people who understand what's actually needed, the harder it is for governments to look away.
Social media has been running wild this week. Some of the arguments are worth having, but throughout all the conversations, no one is talking about our friends sleeping rough tonight. No one is talking about the 56,000 people who needed crisis or longer-term accommodation who couldn't be helped because there aren't enough homes.
Every budget creates winners and losers, and this one has set off the predictable argument about who gained and who didn't. But fixing a housing crisis decades in the making was never going to be painless or universally popular - real reform rarely is. The honest question isn't who comes out ahead this week, but whether we are willing to make the harder, longer-term choices that actually house people.
