Capability is infrastructure too: lessons from regional visits and our Learning and Development Hub consultations
Every new home starts long before construction begins.
Behind it are people who understand communities, organisations that can bring partners together, leaders who can make decisions, teams who know how to navigate funding and development, and relationships built over years.
Across CHFWA’s regional visits and Learning and Development Hub consultations, we are hearing how much of this capability already exists across Western Australia, alongside strong ambition to grow it further.
From workforce shortages affecting housing and community services, to growing interest in Aboriginal-led housing solutions and organisations seeking to better understand housing pathways, one message is clear. Communities want to do more, but they also need the knowledge, partnerships, systems and support to turn ambition into action.
These conversations are shaping the future of Community Housing Futures WA and reinforcing the importance of investing in the organisations and people who will help deliver housing outcomes across Western Australia.
Community Housing Futures WA: The sector is ready to do more
The past few months have been a significant period for CHFWA, with activity spanning the Business Advisory Grant round, regional engagement and the development of the program’s Learning & Development stream offer.
How Small Community Housing Providers Can Build Organisational Capacity
Practical steps small community housing providers can take to strengthen governance, finance, systems, assets and workforce capacity for sustainable growth.
A Month of Momentum
Business Advisory Grants open 1 July, supporting WA community housing organisations to strengthen planning, systems, governance and future delivery.
From Geraldton to Broome
Over six weeks in April and May, the Community Housing Futures WA team hit the road.
We visited Geraldton, Busselton, Bunbury, and Broome, and co-hosted a dedicated session for Aboriginal Community Housing Organisations in Perth alongside our partners at CASWA. Across those five events, we sat with more than 19 community housing organisations, heard from practitioners working at the frontline of housing stress every day, and asked the same four questions in every room: what does the sector need most right now?
No One Left Behind: What Shelter WA Learned from Three Years of Regional Engagement
You cannot design a program for all of Western Australia without first understanding all of Western Australia. That is exactly what Shelter WA set out to do between 2021 and 2023, when it undertook a landmark three-stage regional engagement project, funded by Lotterywest, that took the organisation into communities across all nine WA regions.
From Evidence to Action: How the Paxon Report Shaped Community Housing Futures WA
Every good program starts with a hard look at reality. For Community Housing Futures WA, that moment came in 2022 when Shelter WA commissioned the Paxon Group to examine a question that had been sitting uncomfortably in the sector for years: why is Western Australia’s community housing sector not growing fast enough to meet demand, and what would it take to change that?