Liveability
How does your region solve its own housing problem?
Tell us what your community is doing on housing, wherever you are up to, and take the next step by April. Join monthly webinars with other towns doing the same.
Regional rents rose 6.2% in 2024, faster than capital city rents (4.3%). Regional building approvals fell to 48,570 homes in 2024, while more than 115,000 people moved to regional areas that year.
Workers cannot arrive because there is nowhere to live, and young people cannot afford to stay.
Interest rates, migration and planning rules are set far from town. Matching workers to homes, bringing empty homes back into use and coordinating employers can be organised locally. When towns share what they are doing on housing, other towns can copy what works, and the local evidence builds the case to government.
The Liveability focus area was identified during the Ready Communities Flagship Program in Stanthorpe QLD, where employers struggle to bring in and keep workers because homes are slow to come available.
In the SIITR26 Impact Lab we learned: Most of what drives housing pressure is decided far above the local level. But some communities aren't waiting. What can a region do about its own housing problem?
Sources: Regional Australia Institute, Answering the Call for Regional Housing (2025).
Two ideas came out of the Liveability Impact Lab in Stanthorpe. Use either one if your community needs somewhere to start.
Fits Getting people together
Collect five housing stories from local people: a worker who could not find a home, a family that left, an owner who rented a room to a worker, a community housing tenant, a person who stayed. Show them at a council or community meeting. Share each one here as a housing story.
Fits Acting on a priority
Name one job your town cannot fill or keep because of housing, and house one worker in it by April using any local option: a spare room, a short-stay home moved to long-term rental, an empty home, a granny flat or an employer lease.
How this focus area developed
Employers struggle to bring in and keep workers because homes are slow to come available.
How does your region solve its own housing problem?
Local stories gathered.
Read the July convening insightsThe Lab produced The Face of Housing and One Worker One Home. Community Development Australia proposed opening it to any local housing action.
Share what your community is doing on housing
Share your housing actionLocal action. National impact.
Share your housing actionCouncils, community housing providers, employers, housing action groups, community groups and residents across regional Australia.
No. Getting the right people together for the first time counts as a stage.
Anything your community is doing to house local people or workers: housing stories, worker housing, empty or short-stay homes, land trusts, council and community housing partnerships, planning, or a local housing plan.
Online webinars from November to April. Towns report progress, hear from others and work on shared barriers with Community Development Australia.
Yes. Choose "A helpful housing story" on the form. Stories use first names and towns only.
We combine the barriers from every town into a national summary in the May 2027 Impact Report. We report them without names.
No. Taking part and the webinars are free.
Send the form again by 9 April 2027 with your stage now and what happened. Each entry is published on this page.
