Undercounting social housing building statistics

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ building and construction data—specifically the Building Approvals and Building Activity series—are becoming an increasingly unreliable measure of genuine private sector building activity over the short-to-medium term.

This is due to a definitional anomaly related to social housing, which is built by the private sector via not-for-profit providers—but with primarily government funds.

Within this letter, we outline the rationale for the ABS to either:

1. Review and revise the ‘public sector’ definition to ensure it captures all government-funded social housing construction, or
2. Create a third ownership category that captures the non-profit sector.

Under current measurements, each new housing build is categorised into either private- or public-sector categories, based on the intended owner of the completed building. The specific public sector definition is as follows:

Residential buildings being constructed by private sector builders under government housing authority schemes whereby the authority has contracted, or intends to contract, to purchase the buildings on or before completion, are classified as public sector.

This definition made sense historically. However, due to policy shifts during the 21st century, social housing delivery has moved away from public housing, delivered by governments—and toward community housing, delivered by not-for-profits.