Funded through the Building Better Homes, Towns and Cities National Science Challenge contestable funding process, this research focuses on two critical and strategic questions:

• What is the demand for and value embedded in a social investment in low cost new builds? and,
• How can a building industry which has been engrossed with producing housing in the upper quartiles of value be re-oriented to
  delivering low cost housing?

This solutions-directed research will:

1. Establish current and projected levels and spatial distribution of under-supply of lower quartile housing stock;
2. Establish the association between low cost housing, life chances and outcomes;
3. Establish the fiscal benefits to central and local government respectively of homeownership and secure rental provision facilitated by investment in low cost housing production;
4. Identify the broader or spill-over benefits to the building industry and consumers of a revitalisation of investment in lower quartile housing; and
5. Identify the: (a) Factors and conditions that led the building industry to exit building for lower resourced households and moving their attention to dwellings in the upper quartile of value; and (b) Range of investment mechanisms, policy and regulatory settings, technical building solutions, and industry development in both the building and the housing sectors, that will revitalise low cost housing investment and re-engage the building industry in low cost housing production.