Summary

The community housing sector is a critical component in the wider social housing sector, assisting those eligible to receive housing, allowing for greater social inclusion and wellbeing. To support the sector, improvements in relevant data are needed. When consulting with providers and the wider sector, it was clear that there is a strong need for improved consistency and comparability of data to support a richer understanding of how the sector contributes to the social support system that assists in the benchmarking of performance and further data linkage to enhance planning, policy, and investment decisions.

Engagement has highlighted a particular need to focus on improvement to Indigenous community housing data given the importance of this sector. Consultations heard that the close involvement of organisations and people in improving data is central to ensuring that data collection suitably meets the specific needs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. 

Throughout this process there has been further need expressed by stakeholders to assess data collection system frameworks to reduce duplication and enable streamlined reporting to reduce the reporting burden for community housing providers allowing them to use their valuable time to focus on assisting clients.

There has been a clear message that collection of timely and appropriate data remains important to enable governments and community housing providers to monitor what works well, and to use data to guide planning and investment activities. 

Strategies to improve data literacy among tenants and providers will ensure that improvement to data is prioritised and that the best use can be made of the data collected.