Home Re-imagined: who gets to call this place home?
This article is a distillation of ARM’s panel discussion Home Re-Imagined. It is authored by Lucy Carruthers, ARM Managing Principal and Chief Operating Officer
Housing is now one of the defining civic questions in Australia. It sits at the intersection of often conflicting issues and forces: politics, planning, health, construction procurement, finance, social equity including homelessness, ageing, family violence, and climate resilience. The equation is multi-factorial – numbers, delivery, equity and affordability.
The central question: who gets to live with safety, dignity and permanence? was the proposition posed at Home Re-imagined: Housing Tomorrow in Motion, hosted by ARM Architecture as part of Melbourne Design Week 2026.
We brought together leaders from state and local government, community housing, health research and design to examine why, despite unprecedented investment and sharper public focus, the housing crisis continues to deepen.
The premise was deliberately uncomfortable: Victoria is spending more on housing than at any point in its history, but the waitlist is growing. More homes are being delivered, but more people are experiencing housing stress and homelessness. More approvals are being issued, more money is flowing through the system yet not necessarily resulting in homes. Often the outcomes remain opaque.
This was not a conversation about housing as a market category. It was about housing as the setting for life, a place where people can build lives with dignity and in security, where older people maintain independence, people can sleep safely, where women and children escaping violence begin again, where people are known, and where people belong.
At a political and economic level the language of the housing debate turns human needs into empirical language (number of units, supply, yields, density, feasibility, uplift, and delivery pipelines). While necessary as measurements, they miss the core issue of housing as fundamental social infrastructure with a very human expression of home. This was the focus of our panel discussion.
The supply debate is too blunt
Everyone agrees Melbourne needs more homes. But a better question is: supply for whom? A system can deliver more dwellings and still fail if those homes don’t reach the people most exposed to insecurity. Approvals can rise without completed homes. Investment can grow while need grows faster.
Michele Morrison, Chief Development Officer at Homes Victoria, placed recent delivery – 12,000 homes through the Big Housing Build – within a continuum under pressure: rising rents, mortgage stress, construction cost escalation, economic volatility and cost‑of‑living strain. The pressure is systemic: renters pushed to the edge; mortgage holders exposed to shocks; construction costs constraining delivery; the private market not absorbing need. Downstream pressure falls on social housing, homelessness services and community housing providers. Housing disadvantaged communities cannot remain solely the job of the state: good communities look after and include those in need.
Jack Panton, Managing Director of Affordable Housing Solutions and moderator for the evening, pressed the scale question directly. Victoria’s social housing share remains low by national and international standards. Even after major investment, the gap between need and provision remains stark. The question isn’t whether major government delivery programs matter (they clearly do). The question is whether they are enough when the rest of the system continues to produce insecurity.
Social housing investment matters, and so does private rental reform, affordable housing mandates, construction feasibility, faster planning and commencement, community housing finance, health standards, tenant protections, land policy, procurement models and support services. A large public program without broader system reform chases a moving target; a faster planning system without delivery obligations risks paper supply.
Michelle made a further point that is uncomfortable for anyone who treats social housing as purely a government responsibility: housing disadvantaged communities cannot remain solely the job of the governments – they cannot carry the whole problem alone.
“Good communities look after their weakest. If we don’t, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – and that is not sustainable”
Michele Morrison, Chief Development Officer, Homes Victoria
The conclusion was clear: there is no single housing lever.
More kinds of homes for more kinds of lives
Much of the housing market is organised around a small number of imagined households: singles, couples, nuclear families, investors and downsizers. But the people most exposed to housing stress often sit outside those categories. These include older women living alone, single parents, women and children escaping violence, people with disability, low‑income renters, key workers and intergenerational households. Typology becomes political when available housing types don’t match how people live.
Apartment design guidelines have improved baseline quality – daylight, ventilation, minimum dimensions, open space and amenity – and have helped push back against poor design and minimum-standard development. But standards can reduce the making of a home to a compliance diagram.
The test isn’t whether a dwelling meets a rule, but whether it makes a good home for the people who will live there. Dual‑key apartments may support changing family structures; cluster models can offer independence without isolation; solo studios can work if embedded in support networks; compact family apartments need well‑designed shared spaces, storage, acoustics and thresholds; supported housing should feel domestic, not institutional.
Projects like ARM’s Viv’s Place and Launch Bellfield show what happens when the brief starts with people: safety, threshold, and community.
“Good housing shouldn’t feel like a service. It should feel like a place to live.
Jesse Judd, Director, ARM Architecture
Without typological diversity, people are pushed into inappropriate housing, producing tenancy stress, isolation, health impacts and failed placements. The wrong home can be harmful and result in higher levels of churn, and ultimately human and economic cost. We don’t simply need more dwellings. We need more kinds of homes for more kinds of lives.
A planning permit does not house anyone
One of the sharpest themes of the night was the distinction between approval and delivery.
Approvals are permissions, not outcomes. Warehoused, traded or delayed, they are as much a financial lever that can inflate land value without delivering anything.
Marjorie Kennedy, Head of Homelessness and Housing Pathways at Homes Melbourne, brought the local government and statutory planning perspective. She acknowledged the intent behind faster planning pathways, particularly those seeking to encourage affordable housing. But she questioned whether current mechanisms are delivering enough real public benefit.
Her concern was precise. If a developer receives planning flexibility – additional height, reduced setbacks, faster assessment – the public return must be tangible. A 10 per cent on-site affordable housing contribution can make sense if it is genuinely affordable, linked to income, delivered to low- and very-low-income households, and retained over time. But arrangements that allow a smaller cash contribution into a fund, without a clear local, permanent or measurable housing outcome, are more problematic.
“If planning rules are being stretched in the public interest, the public benefit has to be real.”
Marjorie Kennedy, Head of Homelessness and Housing Pathways, Homes Melbourne
This is the heart of the housing compact.
If communities are asked to accept more height or density in the name of housing need, they should see housing outcomes. If developers receive value through public policy settings, that value should generate public benefit. If affordability is negotiated, it should endure. Otherwise, the planning system risks converting public need into private value without producing the homes that justified the change in the first place.
Marjorie was particularly concerned by affordable housing arrangements that are not secured in perpetuity. A temporary affordability period may assist an individual household for a period of time, but it doesn’t create a lasting community asset. If affordability evaporates after one sale, 10 years or 25 years, the public benefit also evaporates.
Affordable housing should instead be treated as social infrastructure – like parks, drains, schools, libraries, transport and community facilities. This isn’t a discretionary planning sweetener; it’s part of what a functioning city requires.
Jesse pushed the logic further: planning reform should reward homes, not permissions. If a project receives uplift, that uplift should be tied to commencement and delivery. If the homes aren’t delivered within a defined window, the uplift should lapse. That would shift the planning system away from speculative value creation and towards actual housing outcomes.
“Reward homes, not permissions.”
Jesse Judd, Director, ARM Architecture
The principle is simple: public uplift should be tied to public outcome.
That principle could change the way housing approvals are understood. Instead of asking only whether a proposal should be permitted, planning could ask what the approval is expected to deliver, when it will be delivered, how affordability will be secured, and what happens if delivery doesn’t happen.
It’s not anti-development. It’s pro-home and pro-community.
Affordable housing must become keys in doors
Affordable housing cannot remain an optional extra negotiated at the end of a planning process. It needs to become a normal part of city-making.
Jack argued that inclusionary zoning (requiring or incentivising a specific percentage of new residential projects as affordable or social housing) is likely inevitable. Many developers privately accept this, he said, provided it’s introduced predictably and with enough lead time to be priced into land.
A percentage requirement has the advantage of clarity: everyone knows the expectation. It can be priced into acquisition. It’s visible. It connects value uplift to public benefit. It also avoids a system where outcomes depend on negotiation strength, political appetite or site-by-site discretion.
But a fixed percentage won’t always be the right answer on every site. Sometimes on-site affordable housing is best – it supports mixed communities and makes the benefit visible. Sometimes nearby off-site delivery produces a better result, particularly where another site can support more appropriate tenure, management or services. Sometimes a cash contribution can deliver more suitable homes through a registered housing provider.
The decisive issue is whether the contribution actually becomes housing.
If cash disappears into general revenue, the social contract breaks. Communities are told that density is justified by housing need, but don’t see homes delivered. Developers are asked to contribute to affordability but can’t point to clear outcomes. Government receives revenue, but the link between value capture and housing delivery becomes opaque, or breaks.
“A contribution is only meaningful when it becomes someone’s home.”
Jesse Judd, Director, ARM Architecture
This also demands more specificity about who affordable housing is for.
“Affordable housing” can become a vague container. Affordable to whom? At what income? For how long? Under what tenure? Managed by whom? With what support? In what location? For what household type?
Affordable housing policy is strongest when it names the person, the tenure, the duration, the rent setting, the management model and the support structure. Without that specificity, it risks producing nominal affordability rather than actual access.
Housing is health infrastructure
Professor Rebecca Bentley, Director of the NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, made the clearest evidence-based argument of the evening: the way Australia houses people is contributing to the population health burden.
Housing insecurity, cold homes, hot homes, mould and damp are not merely comfort issues. They affect mental health, physical health, disaster recovery, productivity and inequality. Poor housing does not remain a private problem. It becomes a public cost.
The costs of poor housing are already being paid, but often in the wrong ledger. They appear in health budgets, lost productivity, reduced quality of life, delayed recovery, mental health stress and widened inequality. Because those costs are not always counted as housing costs, the system undervalues prevention.
“Poor housing doesn’t stay inside the home. It shows up in mental health, in hospitals, in lost productivity, in disaster recovery and in inequality.”
Professor Rebecca Bentley, University of Melbourne
Rebecca’s research shows that people who are well housed before climate disasters recover better afterwards, both in health and in housing trajectory. That reframes housing as prevention. A secure, healthy home is not only a response to crisis; it is a buffer against future crisis.
This has profound implications for public policy. If good housing reduces health burden, improves resilience and supports recovery, then housing investment should be assessed not only as construction expenditure, but as avoided cost across multiple systems. The benefits accrue not just to residents, but to hospitals, schools, employers, emergency services and communities.
Climate change makes this more urgent. Homes that are too cold, too hot, damp or mould-prone will create escalating health impacts, particularly for low-income households and people with existing vulnerabilities. Disaster events can reduce rental availability, drive up prices and force key workers and low-income residents out of affected communities. Climate risk is therefore not separate from housing affordability. It is part of it.
A home that makes people sick is not affordable, no matter what the rent is.
The people missing from housing policy
The most powerful parts of the discussion came when the panel named the people the system struggles to see.
Contessa “Tessa” von Barron, Senior Affordable Housing Manager at VMCH, spoke about older people at risk of homelessness, particularly women over 55. Many have led “conventional” lives. This cohort disrupts common stereotypes of homelessness. Their housing insecurity is often not the result of a single visible crisis. It can be the accumulated effect of gendered work patterns, caregiving, relationship breakdown, low superannuation, housing unaffordability, elder abuse and private rental insecurity.
VMCH provides long-term, low-cost housing to more than 400 older people at risk of homelessness. Its model charges residents 25–30 per cent of income, is funded through organisational surplus and philanthropy, and offers lifetime licences to occupy.
Tessa’s central point was that housing isn’t solved by a roof alone.
“A roof isn’t the whole solution. For many people, the moment they are housed is the moment their trauma becomes visible.
Contessa von Barron, VMCH
But the most vulnerable people often need a home plus the right support, in the right place, with the right tenure, delivered at the right intensity. Without support, a tenancy can fail, increasing the risk of a person cycling back into homelessness. The key is to balance independence and care.
Marjorie reinforced this through Make Room, the City of Melbourne’s transitional housing project delivered with Homes Victoria, Unison, cohealth and Ngwala Willumbong. She described a model shaped by careful design, larger apartments, cultural sensitivity and on-site support. It has enabled people with long histories of rough sleeping – some of whom had refused other forms of accommodation – to accept housing.
But Make Room also exposes the next systemic failure: where do people go afterwards?
Transitional housing requires a pathway into permanent housing, with support that can move with people or be re-established around them. Without that next step, transitional housing becomes a holding pattern. It may stabilise people temporarily, but it can’t complete the journey.
This was one of the evening’s most important insights: housing is not a single event. It’s a pathway. Crisis housing, transitional housing, social housing, affordable housing, supported housing and private rental need to connect. When they don’t, people cycle back through crisis, often with deeper trauma and less trust.
Design is necessary, but not sufficient
Design can’t fix land prices, income support or market failures, but it can make policy work: humane, adaptable, socially successful homes; legible safety without surveillance; thresholds between public, shared and private life; workable places for support services without turning a home into a facility.
Viv’s Place and Launch Bellfield prove social housing can be civic, dignified and trauma‑informed. The challenge is scale: make quality repeatable. Standardise what should be standardised – kitchens, bathrooms, services, structures, thresholds – to deliver repeatable quality: efficient, durable, particular and humane.
Prefabrication needs a market, not another prototype
Prefab hasn’t failed as an idea but as a system. It must be embedded from the beginning – structure, grid, services, façade, acoustics, fire, transport, cranage, certification and maintenance – and supported by pipeline. The “golden triangle” of volume, quality and cost: volume drives investment, quality comes from tested systems, cost improves through repetition and reduced risk.
Government can aggregate demand across social and affordable housing, key worker and regional housing, student and health worker accommodation, backed by procurement reform, earlier builder/manufacturer involvement and repeatable design platforms. Stop treating every home as a prototype; build a serious pipeline of good, repeatable, dignified housing.
The street is not a housing strategy
Cities must manage public space, but enforcement without housing just moves people around. Rough sleeping is a system failure, not an individual failure. We are all responsible.
From crisis response to civic responsibility
The housing crisis won’t be solved by a single lever. It requires more social housing and better private rental protections; faster planning linked to delivery; affordable housing contributions that become keys in doors; healthy homes; supported pathways; typological diversity; repeatable design quality; construction reform; and community responsibility alongside government action.
We need to reconnect what’s been separated: housing and health; planning and delivery; affordability and tenure security; construction productivity and design quality; crisis response and long‑term support; policy ambition and lived experience. Housing must be understood as civic infrastructure – the foundation for participation, recovery, care, ageing with dignity and belonging. The question is not only how many homes we can build, but whether we can build the right homes, in the right places, with the right support, and with enough dignity that people can genuinely call them home.
The Panel
Jack Panton – Managing Director, Affordable Housing Solutions
Jack Panton moderated the evening. He is Managing Director of Affordable Housing Solutions, advising on social and affordable housing transactions and development. His background includes senior leadership roles at Unison Housing and Launch Housing, where he oversaw Viv’s Place and Bellfield alongside ARM. He has also contributed to the University of Melbourne’s Hallmark Initiative on Affordable Housing and is a public commentator on build-to-rent, tenure security, inclusionary zoning and community housing delivery.
Marjorie Kennedy – Head of Homelessness and Housing Pathways, Homes Melbourne, City of Melbourne
Marjorie Kennedy leads homelessness and housing pathways work at Homes Melbourne, the City of Melbourne’s dedicated housing and homelessness program. Her background is in statutory planning, including as Acting Director of Planning and Building at the City of Melbourne, board member of the Victorian Planning and Environmental Law Association, and planning consultant at SJB. Her expertise sits at the intersection of planning, zoning, homelessness response and municipal housing delivery.
Michele Morrison – Chief Development Officer, Homes Victoria
Michele Morrison has been Chief Development Officer at Homes Victoria since 2020 and has been one of the key figures in the Big Housing Build, a $5 billion-plus program targeting more than 12,000 new homes. Her previous roles include Development Director at Capella Capital and CEO of Exemplar Health, giving her experience across public and private sector development, procurement, partnership models and large-scale social infrastructure delivery.
Professor Rebecca Bentley – Director, NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, University of Melbourne
Professor Rebecca Bentley leads one of Australia’s most significant research programs on housing and health. Her work examines the effects of housing affordability, tenure, insecurity and condition on wellbeing, with a particular focus on mental health. Her research has highlighted the health burden of cold, damp and insecure housing, and the way poor housing conditions generate broader public costs and inequality.
Contessa “Tessa” von Barron – Senior Affordable Housing Manager, VMCH
Tessa von Barron manages VMCH’s statewide affordable housing and retirement living program, providing long-term, low-cost housing to more than 400 older people at risk of homelessness, mainly women over 55. VMCH’s model charges residents 25–30 per cent of income, is funded through organisational surplus and philanthropy, and offers lifetime licences to occupy. Von Barron’s career spans community services, housing development, tenancy and property management, including earlier work with Launch Housing at Bellfield.
Jesse Judd – Director, ARM Architecture
Jesse Judd is a Director of ARM Architecture with more than 20 years’ experience across community, cultural, public and residential projects. He was Design Architect for Viv’s Place, Australia’s first purpose-built permanent housing for women and children escaping family violence, and Bellfield, a 58-dwelling social housing project delivered with Launch Housing, Homes Victoria and Banyule City Council. His work is grounded in the belief that design is social infrastructure: that how a building looks, feels and functions directly affects the health and resilience of the people who live in it.