Victoria accepts 28 of 34 regional housing recommendations, and puts the costly ones under review

The Victorian Government has answered a parliamentary inquiry into the shortage of homes in regional Victoria by agreeing with almost all of it and committing new money to very little of it. Its response, dated May 2026 and listed on the Parliament of Victoria website as the response to the committee's final report on 2 June, supports six of the 34 recommendations in full, seven in part and 15 in principle. Four are recorded as under review. One is not supported. One more is declared a matter for three regional councils rather than the state.

The recommendations came from the Legislative Assembly Environment and Planning Committee, which self referred the inquiry on 2 December 2024, took 118 submissions, held five days of public hearings and made site visits across regional Victoria through 2025. It tabled its final report, with 12 findings and 34 recommendations, on 19 November 2025.

The findings describe a market pulling away from the incomes underneath it. Finding 5 records that property prices in regional Victoria rose between 40 and 50 per cent in the five years to the report. The committee cited Homes Victoria data putting the median rent in regional Victoria at $455 a week in December 2024, against $560 in Melbourne, and heard evidence that the median weekly household income in regional Victoria is just under $1,400 against roughly $1,900 in greater Melbourne. In September 2024, by the committee's account, 34.1 per cent of regional listings were affordable, and only 78 one bedroom rentals in the whole of regional Victoria were affordable to a single person on JobSeeker.

The queue behind that market is the clearest single number in the report. Table 2.5 records 48,443 applications on the Victorian Housing Register preferencing regional locations at March 2025, of which 29,364 were priority applicants. The committee published the caveat with the figure: at a public hearing in Melbourne on 4 April 2025, the chief executive of Homes Victoria told members that regional counts can be overstated by as much as a factor of three, because an applicant may nominate more than one area. Finding 8 concluded that demand for social housing appears to be outpacing delivery, even as the Big Housing Build adds stock.

It is the recommendations that would cost money that the response handles most carefully. Recommendation 33, a 10 year investment plan for social housing across regional Victoria with dedicated regional funding streams, is supported in principle, with the government pointing back to existing commitments: $1.25 billion of the Big Housing Build directed to regional Victoria and $1 billion through the Regional Housing Fund. Recommendation 1, new social housing targets for youth housing, family violence crisis accommodation and accessible homes, is supported in part. Recommendation 2, funding the Aboriginal housing and homelessness framework Mana-na woorn-tyeen maar-takoort in full, is under review pending the government's response to the Yoorrook Justice Commission. The response states plainly that implementation will require investment, and that additional funding must either be considered in future budget processes or found within existing departmental resources.

The one outright rejection is recommendation 15, which asked the government to lower the thresholds for regional projects to enter the Development Facilitation Program. The response says regional thresholds are already below Melbourne's, at a $15 million development cost with at least 10 per cent of dwellings as affordable housing. Recommendation 23, on refining the Windfall Gains Tax, is under review. Recommendation 13, on rezoning around activity centres, is returned to the Cities of Ballarat, Greater Geelong and Greater Bendigo.

Where figures are attached, they are modest against the scale described. The response cites $22.8 million for the Private Rental Assistance Program in 2025/26, supporting more than 7,000 households, and an additional $2.97 million in 2026 to extend the Aboriginal Private Rental Assistance Program to 12 departmental local areas. It reports $445 million invested in Housing First programs since 2020/21, assisting over 3,500 households.

The sectors that gave evidence do not agree on the diagnosis. The Real Estate Institute of Victoria, writing on 3 December 2025, said more than 75 per cent of regional agents named property taxation as the primary obstacle to new housing. Regional Cities Victoria, on 19 November 2025, put the barrier at infrastructure and workforce, its chair arguing that "every dollar spent in the regions works harder to unlock housing". The committee itself placed sustained social housing investment at the centre.

What is not yet known is whether any of this reaches a budget. The response sets no implementation timetable, no costings and no reporting mechanism, and the four recommendations under review carry no date by which they will be resolved. Nor is it clear how the regional queue will be measured once Homes Victoria's own double counting caveat is applied.