New Housing Data Dashboard From 20 National Datasets

A new site has for the first time brought together millions of data sets to provide a wide-ranging picture of the state of housing in Australia, from financing for a mortgage through to population changes and homelessness.

The Housing Data Dashboard as developed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) and the Commonwealth Treasury, with contributions from representatives of more than 20 organisations, including the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).

ALGA wanted to make sure that, where possible, data was available at the LGA level given reliable and up-to-date housing data is important for local governments, especially for assessing the current and future housing needs of their communities.

Data sources include the Australian Bureau of Statistics, CoreLogic Home Property Value Index, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, and OECD Affordable Housing Database.

“Its development has involved liaising with experts in the housing and homelessness fields to identify key national datasets that can be used to develop engaging visualisations,” Minister for Housing and Assistant Treasurer, Michael Sukkar said.

Assistant Minister for Community Housing, Luke Howarth, said the Commonwealth’s investment in the dashboard is a way for all levels of government, the community housing sector and private sector to work together to identify shortfalls and oversupply in order to address housing and homelessness across Australia.

“I’ve met with many housing providers and homeless organisations who have stressed to me the importance of having access to up-to-date data,” he said.

“This database is going to fill that void and will enable more transparency within the sector.”

Users can delve into 20 national datasets. Data can be explored, customised, exported as a PDF and shared.

Each of the 58 data tiles is a gateway to the data source, where detailed analysis, data quality information and additional data are presented, the site says.

The AIHW is interested in making ongoing improvements to the dashboard, so is keen to get feedback from users.