The National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC) has provided funding for around $400 million in loans and grants to deliver more social and affordable housing across Melbourne, as part of a Community Housing Limited (CHL)-driven consortium from the not for profit, public, private and industry sectors.

This will be NHFIC’s largest transaction to date and includes approximately $51 million of financing from the National Housing Infrastructure Facility (NHIF) that will accelerate critical infrastructure development for these projects.

The Building Communities consortium, led by CHL and Tetris Capital, has been announced as the preferred bidder for three metropolitan Melbourne housing projects to be delivered under an innovative ground lease structure on vacant Homes Victoria land in Brighton, Flemington and Prahran.

With NHFIC’s support, the c.$500 million project will deliver, operate, and maintain at least 1,100 new homes including social, affordable, specialist disability accommodation and private rental dwellings. The NHIF funding will provide critical infrastructure such as roads, water and power, along with remediation works for the sites. In total, the NHFIC loan and grant is expected to provide a benefit to CHL of more than $50m in savings over the life of the project.

NHFIC CEO Nathan Dal Bon said this ground-breaking agreement is a prime example of how federal and state governments can work with the not for profit, private and community housing sectors to deliver much-needed social and affordable housing.

“Community housing providers taking on a project of this scale and complexity will position them to reinvest in additional new housing supply,” Mr Dal Bon said.
Tetris Capital Principal Ryan Slocombe said: “This is the biggest project of its kind and it simply wouldn’t have been possible without the backing and expertise of NHFIC.”

CHL’s Managing Director Steve Bevington said: “We have had a successful partnership with NHFIC since its inception. This funding in particular is game changing, enabling CHL to accelerate the delivery of large scale new social and affordable housing for hundreds of Victorians in a model that is replicable for the renewal of public housing nationally.”

With this deal, NHFIC has committed more than $810 million for social and affordable housing in Victoria since the Corporation was established in 2018, including $720 million through the Affordable Housing Bond Aggregator (AHBA) and over $90 million through the NHIF.