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Welcome to the Australian Centre for Housing Research at the University of Adelaide.
The Australian housing system is an $8 trillion asset of more than 10 million owned, rented, and government assisted dwellings. It is used by governments as an economic engine, a welfare tool, and a conduit to deliver health and social interventions. For ordinary Australians, it represents our major lifetime investment, most significant day-to-day expenditure, the place we spend 70 per cent of our time. Our housing system is also set to grow substantially over the next 30 years as Australia’s economy and population expands.
The Australian Centre for Housing Research (ACHR) is a collaboration of researchers, policy stakeholders, industry, and advocacy. Based at the University of Adelaide, the Centre aims to:
- Provide a focus for national and international collaboration around housing issues
- Deliver high-quality, innovative and relevant research on housing
- Inform social policy, practice, public debate, and decision making across the housing sector
An Australian rental housing conditions research infrastructure
Each year the proportion of Australians who rent their home increased and, for the first time in generations, there are now as many renters as outright homeowners. Researchers and policy makers, however, know very little about housing conditions within Australia's rental housing sector due to a lack of systematic, reliable data. In 2020, a collaboration of Australian universities commissioned a survey of tenant households to build a data infrastructure on the household and demographic characteristics, housing quality and conditions in the Australian rental sector. This data infrastructure was designed to be national (representative across all Australian States and Territories), and balanced across key population characteristics. The resultant Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset (ARHDC) is a publicly available data infrastructure for researchers and policy makers, providing a basis for national and international research.
Read the Nature Scientific Data paper Access the Rental Housing Conditions dataset
Latest news
02 Mar
'What works' to sustain Indigenous tenancies - Report Publication
Congratulations to centre researchers Megan Moskos, Linda Isherwood, and Emma Baker for the publication of their AHURI Final Report 'What works' to sustain Indigenous tenancies in Australia, written in collaboration with Professor Michael Dockery and Dr Ngoc Thien Anh Pham. 01 Mar
Exploring the well-being of renters during the COVID-19 pandemic
New research by ACHR director Emma Baker and friends Dr. David Oswald and Dr. Trivess Moore exploring the well-being of renters during the COVID-19 pandemic has been published open-access in International Journal of Housing Policy. Read the full article here. 25 Feb
Research and Innovation Feature: Australian Rental Housing Conditions Dataset
Our ARC-funded project on Australian Rental Housing Conditions has been featured on the University of Adelaide Research and Innovation news page.
