As one of Australia’s largest community housing providers, Evolve Housing has been actively engaging with the Housing Australia Future Fund Facility (HAFFF) to unlock new opportunities for the delivery of social and affordable housing. Our experience through HAFFF Round 1 provided valuable insights into structuring partnerships that can meet both the impact mandate of community housing and the commercial expectations of institutional capital.
While HAFFF Round 1 was a welcome milestone in federal housing policy, early progress was constrained by political uncertainty and macroeconomic volatility. As Brett Manwaring, Chief Financial Officer & General Manager Corporate Finance at Evolve Housing, explained:
“Investors were understandably cautious. There was still ambiguity around deal structures, return thresholds, and even the long-term stability of the policy itself. But we saw HAFFF Round 1 as a strategic opportunity to test our own readiness—to prepare projects, deepen partnerships, and understand how to align institutional capital with community housing delivery.”
Despite the early challenges, Evolve Housing successfully secured funding for 11 projects under HAFFF Round 1, paving the way for the delivery of more than 1,200 new social and affordable homes, representing more than 30% of total approved properties in NSW and circa 9% of the national total. Through this process, we developed robust internal frameworks to navigate the financial complexity, governance requirements, and investor expectations associated with institutional capital. These foundations, built through experience, now position us strongly to scale our impact and respond confidently to future HAFFF opportunities. Key learnings from Round 1 included:
- The importance of early site readiness and planning approvals to shorten investment decision cycles and to provide project delivery certainty;
- The need for transparent risk-sharing mechanisms across partners, and;
- The value of co-designing projects with investors and developers from the outset to ensure alignment of financial and social outcomes.
With the recent re-election of the Federal Labor Government there is now a much higher level of policy certainty surrounding the HAFFF. At the same time, stabilising macroeconomic conditions and falling interest rates are improving the feasibility of lower-yield housing investments for superannuation and institutional investors.
“We now have greater confidence that the HAFFF is here to stay,” said Brett. “The fundamentals are stronger—there’s a more stable policy environment, clearer investment pathways, and a growing recognition that social and affordable housing must be part of a long-term national infrastructure strategy.”
Evolve Housing is continuing to work closely with our partners in the development and finance sectors to bring forward a pipeline of high-quality projects that are investor-ready and capable of delivering long-term social impact at scale. Our aim is to leverage the lessons of Round 1 to attract new capital and de-risk delivery for future rounds—creating homes that are not only financially sound investments, but also life-changing assets for communities.
We look forward to collaborating with Housing Australia, government partners, developers, and institutional funders to realise the shared ambition behind the HAFFF: to unlock enduring solutions to Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
For investment or partnership discussions related to our HAFFF-aligned pipeline, please contact our team at partnerships@evolvehousing.com.au.
