National Housing Summit

Bringing together housing and homelessness, family violence, NDIS, mental health, aged care, child protection, AOD, First Nations services

About the event:

The National Housing Summit 2027 is Australia’s first cross-sector forum placing housing at the centre of the national agenda, by bringinging together housing and homelessness, family domestic violence, NDIS, mental health, aged care, child protection, alcohol and other drugs, refugee, First Nations, veterans and justice services under one roof for one critical conversation.

This full-day summit will bring together ministers, sector leaders, practitioners and people with lived experience to trace Australia’s housing crisis across the full care continuum, and invite every sector to the table to solve it.

Through six panel discussions, including a dedicated First Nations panel, the National Housing Summit will:

• Set the shared problem statement for why housing has become every sector’s emergency
• Centre Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices and solutions in the national housing conversation
• Identify the system-wide transition points where people are falling through the gaps
• Examine how federal and state policy architecture is contributing to the crisis
• Spotlight the cross-sector workforce challenges and opportunities
• Secure concrete commitments to action from government and sector leaders

The National Housing Summit is a genuine first for Australia, a landmark conversation that will put housing at the heart of every sector’s agenda and every government’s responsibility.

Why this summit and why now?

Housing insecurity is the common thread running through family violence, disability, mental health, aged care, child protection, alcohol and other drugs, refugee settlement, youth homelessness, veterans’ services and justice, but Australia has continued to treat it as a single sector’s problem.

The evidence is clear and compelling:

• Domestic and family violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women and children
• More than 30% of people accessing homelessness services have a mental health issue
• 1 in 3 people in social housing have a disability
• Older women are the fastest growing cohort of homeless Australians
• 63% of people exiting AOD treatment into unstable housing relapse within 12 months
• 60% of people released from prison expect to be homeless on release

It is time for a new national approach. For policy, funding and service design to recognise that the housing crisis is not a single sector’s crisis — it is a whole-of-care-economy crisis that demands a whole-of-government response.

That is the purpose and the promise of the National Housing Summit 2027, to bring the entire ecosystem together for the first time and catalyse the cross-sector solutions Australia urgently needs.