Rental Housing Subsidy Policy: NRAS

As house prices become increasingly unaffordable, many families turn to rental housing. However, the higher rent in some market places is placing a lot of families under stress, in particular the low-income families. Thus, many housing policies and strategies have been introduced by governments to support low-income families in improving their housing affordability. The national rental affordability scheme (NRAS) in Australia is such example. The scheme aims to increase supply of affordable rental housing for low-income families. The NRAS provides an annual tax-free incentive for investors to purchase new affordable dwellings and rent them at 20% below market rents to low-income families. This paper studies of the NRAS scheme and investigates the impacts of using the scheme for improving affordable rental housing. The paper will first study the NRAS structure and the performance since the policy introduced. Secondly, the impacts of the scheme will be investigated through case studies to establish whether the incentive provides a stronger influence on private investors in encouraging them to provide affordable rental housing for low-income families