Predicting risk to inform housing policy and practice

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Understanding more about critical life events as contributors to housing stress can support policy development options that go beyond the usual administrative boundaries and support intersectional approaches to reducing housing stress.

This Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) study explores how critical life events can be used to predict short-term, medium-term and long-term periods of housing stress for individuals and households, which might, in turn, lead to further housing and related forms of disadvantage and support needs. It considers how the identification of ‘risk pathways’ support an early intervention model of housing assistance for different population groups.

Key Findings

  • Increasing national housing-assistance expenditure and a growing proportion of the Australian population requiring support indicates the need for optimally targeted, effective forms of housing-assistance interventions.
  • Existing evidence about intersectional drivers for housing assistance, coupled with administrative data about housing-assistance recipiency, allow us to examine how early prediction of housing-assistance need could support more effective delivery of this housing assistance.
  • The study developed a national predictive model for entering housing stress, based on complexity of critical life events in interaction with household resources. This tool can be used to support timely policy intervention in response to housing shocks.
  • Understanding more about upstream critical life events as contributors to housing stress can support policy development options that go beyond the usual administrative boundaries, and support intersectional approaches to reducing housing stress.
  • A policy workshop with key stakeholders indicated strong and urgent support for the development of this methodology, and rapid policy application across policy realms, tenures, population cohorts and housing-assistance models.

Report

Read the AHURI Predicting risk to inform housing policy and practice report here.

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