Australia is spending ten billion dollars to build affordable housing that, in at least some cases, rejects applicants for not earning enough money to afford the affordable housing. Read that sentence again. Yes, it says what you think it says.
The Scam Hidden Inside the Solution
A Four Corners investigation has found that rentals listed under Australia's affordable housing schemes in New South Wales and Victoria are, in some cases, being advertised above median market rates. Not slightly below market. Not at market. Above it. These are properties receiving government subsidies specifically so they can be cheaper than the market.
The federal government's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, known as HAFF, is at the centre of this. It is subsidising thousands of so-called social and affordable homes around the country, and it is supposed to be the cavalry arriving to fix Australia's rental crisis. What Four Corners found instead is a system that has managed to be simultaneously expensive for renters, profitable for developers, and largely useless for the people it was built to help.
Since 2025, more than 33 per cent of Australia's median household income has been required just to cover median rent. That is the worst result on record. The government's answer to this crisis is a program that, in practice, locks out the people hit hardest by it.
Meet the 'Unicorn' Tenant Who Doesn't Actually Exist
Here is how the math works, and it is genuinely maddening. Under most affordable housing schemes, rents are meant to be set at a discount to market rate, and tenants are not supposed to spend more than 30 per cent of their pre-tax income on rent. That sounds reasonable. The problem is that developers also set income caps, meaning tenants cannot earn above a certain threshold to qualify.
The result is what people in the industry call a "Goldilocks" or "unicorn" tenant: someone who earns too much to be truly poor, but not so much that their 30 per cent of income falls short of the rent being charged. Four Corners found this band can be extraordinarily narrow. In some cases, the only people who could actually afford the "affordable" rent without breaching the 30 per cent stress threshold were solidly middle-income earners.
Christopher Hewson, a casual university tutor and rideshare driver in Melbourne, applied for a rental at Swift Walk, a development run by Australian Super and Hesta-backed developer Assemble and its charity partner Housing Choices Australia. He was rejected. In his application, he explicitly noted he was paying more in rent where he currently lived and wanted to move to save money. He ended up paying more in the private market instead. The system built to help people like Christopher actively excluded him.
Empty Apartments, Full Subsidies, Big Investors
Swift Walk is not some small pilot project. It is the largest completed development supported by the HAFF, and seven months after its completion, Four Corners found roughly 18 of its 181 affordable properties were sitting empty. Some of those vacant units appeared to be priced above median market rents for the surrounding area, which raises the obvious question of who, exactly, was ever meant to live in them.
Assemble told the ABC its market rents were set based on an independent valuation. Managing director Kris Daff said more than 90 per cent of the affordable apartments had been leased and expressed confidence the vacant ones would fill soon. He also confirmed that Assemble does not receive subsidies for homes that remain empty, which is something, though it does beg the question of what happens to the financial incentive to house the most vulnerable if the unicorn tenants prove easier to find and more profitable to chase.
Here is the part that should make your blood pressure tick upward: Assemble and its charity partner have been awarded nearly $2.5 billion in HAFF subsidies and loans over 25 years for 11 projects. Daff also confirmed that after that 25-year subsidised period ends, the affordable homes will convert to market-rate housing. So taxpayers fund the development, the developer collects two and a half billion in public money, and in 25 years the affordable homes just... stop being affordable. Terrific deal. For one party.
The Government's Answer: Basically, Shrug
Federal Housing Minister Claire O'Neil acknowledged to Four Corners that setting affordable rents at a 25 per cent discount to market rate, which HAFF mandates, creates challenges in high-rent areas. "I think it is generally a workable model," she said, adding that in areas with extremely high market rents "it does create difficulties."
She also said, and this is a direct quote, "I'm sure you've got examples where, at the fringes, things aren't working as you would like them to." The fringes. A system where the people most crushed by the rental crisis cannot qualify for the housing built for them is being described as a fringe problem.
RMIT economist and emeritus professor David Hayward put it more plainly to the ABC: "I think what's happened is that we're seeing this bizarre situation of us developing a system where social and affordable housing becomes a vehicle for people to make money out of, not how do you meet the housing needs of the tenants." That is an economics professor's way of saying what most ordinary Australians would put in considerably saltier terms.
More Than 30 Per Cent of Australians Rent. That Number Is Going Up.
According to the latest ABS data, just over 30 per cent of Australians are renters, and with house prices remaining stratospheric for most people, that proportion is predicted to keep rising. The government knows this. The housing crisis is not a secret. It is the reason billions are being spent on programs like HAFF in the first place.
The goal is to build at least 30,000 affordable homes by 2029. Whether those homes will actually be affordable for the people who need them most is, based on what Four Corners found at Swift Walk, a genuinely open question. Governments across Australia are up-ending city planning laws and handing billions to private developers and big super funds to make this happen faster. The assumption built into that strategy is that private sector efficiency and profit motive can be pointed at a social problem and produce a social solution. Swift Walk suggests that assumption needs a lot more scrutiny than it is currently getting.
The Dingo Take
Let's be precise about what Four Corners has actually documented here. Not a minor administrative glitch. Not a bureaucratic misunderstanding. What the investigation found is a publicly subsidised housing program that, in practice, screens out the poorest applicants, prices some units above the open market, leaves apartments sitting empty while people sleep in cars, and is structured so that in 25 years the affordable stock simply reverts to whatever the market will bear. And the government's response is that this is basically fine, with some fringy exceptions.
The Albanese government deserves credit for trying to do something about the housing crisis. That is genuinely true. HAFF is real money and the ambition to build 30,000 homes is real too. But "we're trying" is not the same as "it's working," and there is a profound difference between a housing affordability program and a housing program that happens to use the word affordable in its marketing. The private sector does not build housing out of the goodness of its heart. It builds housing to make money. Asking it to solve a social crisis without airtight rules about who gets housed and at what price is like asking a poker player to run a charity and being surprised when the chips end up in the usual direction.
Christopher Hewson applied for a cheaper place to live and was turned down because he was not the right kind of poor. Sarah Hutt thought she'd won the lottery when she got a subsidised studio in Sydney. Eighteen apartments sat empty at Australia's flagship affordable housing development because they cost too much for the people they were built for. This is not a fringe problem. This is the program.
