The National Social Housing Survey (NSHS) provides insights into the experience of social housing tenants. Tenant opinions on amenities firstly requires tenants to nominate amenities as important, and then the proportion reported are those who then also judge whether their needs are met against these amenities.

The NSHS is managed by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and is conducted every two years. The survey provides information on social housing tenants, information about their housing histories, their satisfaction with their social housing, their satisfaction with the services and amenities provided, and information about their household’s use of other health and community services. The survey began in 1996 with public housing tenants and has expanded to include community housing tenants (2001), state owned and managed Indigenous housing (SOMIH) (2005) and Indigenous community housing tenants in Queensland (2018). While there are methodological differences between survey cycles and data over time should be interpreted with caution, the adoption of more consistent survey instruments since 2012 has allowed greater comparability across both social housing programs and states and territories since this time.

NSHS data are also used in the following dashboard menu option: Tenant satisfaction with services.

See AIHW - National Social Housing Survey for further information, including in-depth commentary and analysis, in particular, the survey methodological report and data Quality Statement. Source reference table S3.1.