The Housing and Productivity Research Consortium (HPRC) is an emerging collaboration between non-profit, private and government organisations and leading researchers in applied housing economics and policy. Key players include the Community Housing Industry Association, National Shelter and the Property Council of Australia, as well as UNSW, the University of Adelaide and Swinburne University.
The Consortium aims to design, fund and deliver research to enhance economic understandings of housing system outcomes that will better inform the policymakers and other housing system stakeholders. It builds on two foundational studies Making Better Economic Cases for Housing, and Strengthening Economics Cases for Housing – both led by Prof Duncan Maclennan and undertaken in conjunction with other UNSW colleagues. Those reports identify key research questions about the links between housing outcomes, productivity, stability and affordability.
With impacts of COVID-19 on the housing system becoming clearer and the broad outlines of the post COVID-19 economy more apparent, the this project reviews how major consequences of housing productivity and stability for the longer term could be reflected in better policy approaches across all orders of government. It involves a range of leading housing policy makers and practitioners in a high level moderated ‘debate’ that synthesises a range of views on the future evolution of Australia’s housing system.
Building on a review of published literature on evidence of key housing economy relations in Australia and informed opinions on the housing impacts of COVID-19, the study applies a ‘Delphi’ technique for gauging expert opinions on a range of housing and productivity related issues. This allows the views of topic experts to be collected through an initial targeted survey to inform an aggregated picture of interviewee thinking. To tease out participant reasoning and to better understand what underlies opinion diversity, this is then discussed with all participants individually, highlighting similarities and contrasts between views of each participant and the collective wisdom on each issue.
