Mel Yuan for Brunswick

The four “channels” of the $5.3 billion Big Housing Build rely on “Ground Lease Models” and “Public-Private Partnerships” (PPPs), in which private developers manage or lease public land for periods of up to 40 years. In practice, this directs public funding into long-term, highly conditional contracts with private entities. Such arrangements risk failing to deliver the social and economic objectives of social housing, while tying both developers and Community Housing Providers (CHPs) to business models that may prove financially unviable—even in the short term. Compounding this, the opacity of these agreements makes it difficult to assess whether they deliver any real public benefit.

The PPP model for public housing has effectively produced stagnant (“flatline”) delivery of new social housing, while contributing to the large-scale displacement of existing residents. There are also serious questions about whether demolishing extensive areas of existing housing is justified at all. Yet under current arrangements, developers derive value primarily through the effective sell-off of public housing assets.

Similarly, the development of “surplus government land” involves the state funding costly remediation of former industrial sites, only for private developers to ultimately realise the economic gains. Post-construction requirements—such as allocating 10% of dwellings to affordable housing or First Nations households—are typically outside the developer’s ongoing control, raising doubts about whether these policy goals can be reliably achieved.

Direct funding through the “Social Housing Growth Fund” presents comparable risks. CHPs, underwritten by government guarantees, are encouraged to borrow in the private market and act as both developers and long-term housing operators. Because they retain ownership of the properties, they also assume full responsibility for maintenance, property management, and tenant services—liabilities that are effectively kept off the public balance sheet. However, this structure also reduces direct government control over social and economic outcomes.

In “Spot Purchases and In-Flight Turnkeys“, the government may intervene by purchasing developments at various stages, effectively determining whether projects succeed or fail. This raises a critical question: what happens when projects are financially unviable?

The state has gone to considerable lengths to avoid directly building, owning, or managing housing—even when it provides the funding. Unsurprisingly, there are early signs of strain: some developers are already withdrawing from projects (as seen in the Assemble case), while certain CHPs are being left with financially unsustainable housing stock (as in the HousingFirst example).

It is only a matter of time before renters and participants in long-term lease or rent-to-buy schemes encounter unintended consequences. Lost your job? Found somewhere cheaper? Housing needs change? No longer qualify? If developers or CHPs fail financially, the state—having designed and promoted these models—will ultimately bear the responsibility for systems that risk being driven more by wishful thinking than by sound policy.

Victoria spent $2.16 billion on the social housing system during the 2024–25 financial period. Approximately 1,500 to 2,000 state-funded social and affordable homes were physically completed and handed over to tenants over the 2025/26 timeline. As of mid-2026, approximately 150,000 to 160,000 residents live across Victoria’s broader social housing sector. As of March 2026, the total volume of new, standalone applications on the register reached 57,372 households. When including approximately 10,600 existing tenant transfer applications (households already in social housing needing to move due to changing family sizes or estate redevelopments), the entire system backlog tracks at roughly 68,000 active applications.

You have to ask whether that $2.16 billion is really targeting those most in need.