dwelltell

Dwelltopia appoints you captain

Housing policy is trade-offs under pressure. Pick assumptions, allocate budget, and defend your mandate.

Read the context and design brief

Dwelltopia appoints you treasurer, tsar and totalitarian ruler for housing.

You are given a live model of an element of the housing system with simplified funding streams, costs, targets, and constraints inherited from real government budgets and data. From there, you decide:

  • Whether to tax, levy, borrow, or cut elsewhere to pay for it
  • Which promises to keep or break, how detailed a plan you wish to develop
  • What to fund in climate resilience and retrofits, disaster response provision and proactive adaptive action
  • Support for social housing, rent subsidies, first-home buyers and incentives for investors and industry partners
  • Prescribe required standards or incentivise optimal engagement
  • Improve information integrity and reshape the scope and scale of the system

Housing is a wicked challenge. To make the system usable, some assumptions are simplified. Where possible, default values are drawn from official forecasts and public budgets, so the choices you make resemble the ones governments actually face. Inspired by Be the Chancellor, this sandbox puts you in charge.

Homelessness Innovation Fund
Baseline program

Homelessness Innovation Fund

Jurisdiction
NSW
Author
NSW Government
Period
July 2024 → June 2028
Budget
$100,000,000
Fund documents →
Goal

The initial target is reducing the current demand and costs of temporary accommodation, and proposals for service reform and innovation. The broader goal is to move from a crisis-driven system to more preventative approaches.

Overview

Four-year frontline homelessness services with programs for reforming temporary accommodation and service reform and innovation.

Status

Annual reports disclose that $26 million was awarded in the first year across 72 projects. The detail provided (as at 21 January 2026) on the Department of Communities and Justice Homelessness Innovation Fund website discloses 70 projects were funded in the first year for a total amount of $24.5m (so a variance of $1.5m against the reported awards). No disclosure about the second year awards has been provided.

Total Program Budget
$100,000,000
Total Allocations
$24,533,024
24.5% of fund
Contributions
$0
Annual baseline
CAPEX
$0
OPEX
$0
Admin
$0
Compliance
$0

Temporary accommodation

Reducing the cost and demand for temporary accommodation

Hotels are expensive. The intervention is a crisis response rather than a preventative or permanent solution

Reduce the cost of temporary accommodation

Emergency accommodation in low-cost hotels, motels, caravan parks, boarding houses and similar accommodation for people who are experiencing a housing crisis or homelessness is expensive.

Short stay
Commitment metrics
The average nightly rate for temporary accommodation for a single person
In FY24, the NSW government reported its average cost as $165 per night (in regional NSW)
Baseline
$165
Sensitivity: high
The average nightly rate for temporary accommodation for a single person
In FY24, the NSW government reported its average cost as $185 per night (in regional NSW)
Baseline
$185
The average nightly rate for temporary accommodation for a family of 4 people (or fewer)
In FY24, the NSW government reported its average cost as $210 per night (in regional NSW)
Baseline
$210
The average nightly rate for temporary accommodation for a family of more than 4
In FY24, the NSW government reported its average cost as $245 per night (in regional NSW)
Baseline
$245
The annual cost of hotels and other crisis accommodation
The NSW Government (Appendix 2 to the NSW Homelessness Strategy 2025-2035) claims that the total additional costs to the NSW Government to accommodate people experiencing homelessness is approximately $458 million ($FY24) per annum. It cites the Pathways to Homelessness, final report, December 2021, NSW Department of Communities and Justice, with figures adjusted for inflation and multiplied by the number of people experiencing homelessness (36,700).
Baseline
$458,000,000
Reduce the length of stay in temporary accommodation

Temporary accommodation is designed to meet a gap in the service system by providing a short-term accommodation response for people without complex needs while they arrange more suitable longer-term accommodation.

Short stay
Commitment metrics
The number of nights stay in temporary accommodation
In FY24, the average length of stay was 27 nights, implying an average stay cost of $4,455, $4,995, $5,670, and $6,615 respectively.
Baseline
27 nights
Reduce the need for repeat stays in temporary accommodation
Short stay
Commitment metrics
The number of clients in temporary accommodation who have used this service previously
In FY24, the NSW Government reports that one third of clients had used the temporary accommodation that year, had a previous experience in temporary accommodation.
Baseline
0.33 %

Services and systemic reform

To support homelessness services to transform accommodation and service delivery through flexible approaches that adapt to changing client needs and demand, and improve outcomes for people experiencing homelessness

Some people experiencing homelessness are not visible in the administrative data, for example unmet requests for support and people who do not seek support from homelessness services.

Increase access to support

Support services for those with complex needs are fragmented. The 10 year Homelessness strategy aims to improve that coordination. With better support, the pathway to permanent housing might improve.

Experimental
Commitment metrics
Two-way pathway analysis
Pattern analysis of service use that precedes homelessness presentations, identifying potential intervention points and improving the prediction of homelessness risk. Support services for complex needs are fragmented. Closing these loops requires coordinated effort between sector specialists and those with resources. Using this framework, the most useful service interventions would target groups who are at high risk, have good coverage, and generate high potential savings. Generally, there is a trade-off between risk uplift and coverage – some services are highly predictive but identify a small slice of homelessness risk.
Baseline
—
The risk uplift
How many more times a person is likely to access homelessness services if they have accessed the other service in the past year
Baseline
—
Cost difference
The additional costs across government services over three years for people who accessed both services, compared to people who just accessed the first service but did not go on to access homelessness services. It is per person and represents an upper bound on the potential cost savings from an effective intervention
Baseline
—
Coverage
The proportion is the proportion of people presenting to homelessness services that also accessed the other service in the previous year
Baseline
—
Encourage flexible use of properties and services

In anticipation of reduced demand for temporary accommodation, flexible use is identified as a value. No data that informs a timeline to having supply in excess of capacity has been provided. The Homelessness Action Plan for 2025-27 says that it will use demountable buildings on vacant properties to improve supply of temporary accommodation.

Experimental
Attract co-contributions

Contributions from those in the housing sector of any kind, including case management support, land, properties, cash/equity, debt, tax concessions, philanthropic donations, reduced or avoided costs, or in-kind contributions are sought. The value and quantum of those contributions form part of the assessment profile for applications to the fund. An innovation fund should catalyse transformation and unlock solutions. If this fund can harness assets, then this assessment criteria has merit. It may also discourage upstarts who do not have existing resources.

Experimental
Transform current accommodation and/or service responses

The goal is to accommodate more people, and to give them better housing outcomes. Cohort specific programs, different approaches for those with complex needs, cultural sensitivity, and improved methods of triage are ways that services could be improved.

Experimental
Test new service delivery approaches

In-action research to support homelessness services find improved solutions. The scale of the problem is significant. Resources are constrained. New solutions are needed.

Experimental
Adapt to changing need and demand for services

Increase the flexibility of assets and supports so they can better respond to client needs. No rationale has been provided.

Community proposals
Browse shortlist cards, then inspect any proposal in full detail.
Ideas
0 ideas
No ideas found for these filters.
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Try assumptions and allocations. Sign in to save and publish your own plan.
Budget
$100,000,000
Remaining
$75,466,976
Allocated (this mandate)
$0
Assumptions tuned
0
Ideas funded
0
Fund management plan
Adjust assumptions, allocate funds to ideas, then review the analysis of your approach.
Move the sliders to set your range for parameters around each attribute.