Campaigns

Swinburne University and Housing for the Aged Action Group released a new report at Parliament House in Canberra today, showing that across the country, older people are increasingly facing multiple, overlapping forms of housing precarity, with serious impacts on their health and wellbeing. Older renters face the greatest risk, living in housing insecurity in unaffordable and poor condition homes, and older women disproportionately affected.

This report by Swinburne University of Technology, commissioned by Housing for the Aged Action Group, explores the multiple, often overlapping forms of housing precarity experienced by mid- life and older people in Australia, focusing on private renter households and mortgaged households. The report combines measures of housing affordability stress and housing quality and conditions, offering a new lens on multidimensional precarity for ageing Australians.

Read the full report

Read the summary of Federal Recommendations

HAAG's pre-budget submission calls on the Victorian Government to further invest in our housing support and early intervention services, build Public and Community housing with some set aside for older people, revitalise the ILU sector and pilot shared equity housing schemes for older people.

Read our pre-budget submission

The new Support at Home program, implemented in response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, aims to ensure ‘a simpler and more equitable system for older people that helps them to stay at home for longer’. While HAAG supports this vision, we hold grave concerns about whether the implementation of the program will meet the needs of older people in precarious housing.

Read the submission here

Housing for the Aged Action Group strongly supports the Council’s proposal to lease land for community housing in Rosebud. We commend Mornington Peninsula Shire for its vision to provide safe, stable, and affordable medium-term housing for low-income women and their children, as well as women aged 55 and over at risk of homelessness. Community housing provides vital affordable and stable housing that older people desperately need.

Read our submission here

Legislation before the ACT Parliament proposes that the right to housing is included in their Human Rights Act. Secure, adequate housing is fundamental to the wellbeing of older people. HAAG supports measures to ensure older people’s rights are protected and they are empowered to exercise those rights.
 
HAAG strongly supports the inclusion of the right to adequate housing in the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT), and urges the Committee to recommend that the Human Rights (Housing) Amendment Bill 2025 be passed.

Read our submission here

Housing for the Aged Action Group welcomes the passing of new Retirement laws after a five year consultation period and many more years of advocacy from residents. The new laws include significant changes that will improve the day-to-day life of residents, such as a mandatory code of conduct for operators, standardized contracts for new residents, limits on renovation costs, fairer rules about allocating capital gain, and greater transparency and clarity about fees. 

We wanted to take a moment to thank all of you, our members, for the work that you did in the lead up to the election. Sending letters to candidates, meeting members of Parliament, speaking up about older people’s housing. It is your voices and the stories we hear every day from our clients that makes our advocacy powerful.
 

HAAG welcomes the Prime Minister’s election night commitments to ensuring that ‘no-one is left behind’, and to ‘looking after older Australians’. One of the most effective foundations to achieve this will be to ensure that everyone has a secure home they can afford. Distressingly, increasing numbers of older people are prevented from achieving this basic human need. They are at risk of homelessness, or are going without food, essential medications, heating and cooling, and healthcare just to keep a roof over their head.

After decades of campaigning for safe, secure and affordable housing for older people, the housing crisis is finally getting the attention it deserves in this election campaign. Labor, the Coalition and the Greens are all vying to woo voters with pledges they claim will improve the affordability of housing. HAAG is pleased that housing has been such a prominent issue in the election, but we are deeply disappointed that that the unprecedented housing crisis facing older people has not been addressed.

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