Only a fraction of the one million homes the federal government promised to deliver in the budget will be affordable for low income Australians, Greens analysis shows.
In the October budget, the government announced a national housing accord to build one million new homes over five years starting from 2024.
But Parliamentary Library analysis commissioned by the Greens found only 2.02 per cent of the new homes would be affordable for low income earners.
The independent analysis used the 30:40 definition, which is where the bottom 40 per cent of earners spend no more than 30 per cent of their income on housing costs.
Excluding the accord's explicit commitment to deliver 20,000 social and affordable housing dwellings through the Housing Australia Future Fund, the commitment will only deliver around 184 affordable homes.
"With no substantial investment in public housing, no plans to scrap negative gearing and no plans to freeze rent increases, the housing accord is nothing but more of the same, and that's what got us in the housing crisis in the first place," Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather said.
"You don't solve the housing crisis by providing incentives and tax concessions to property developers to build the same number of luxury homes they did over the last five years, you solve it by building public and community housing," he said.
The analysis compared average incomes to market rents around the country to see the proportion of homes that fall within the 30:40 affordability definition, with Darwin the only region with homes in this category.
The accord's ambition has also been questioned given the private market has completed 985,000 homes in the past five years, which isn't far off the government's one million target.
The government has said the one million target would help deliver extra housing because rising interest rates were expected to dampen construction over the next few years.
University of NSW research released on Tuesday found poor housing affordability was expected to force thousands more people into homelessness, overcrowding or housing stress.
Housing affordability is already a pressing issue, with 640,000 households already living in housing that's not suitable.
But this number is expected to swell to 940,000 households by 2041.
