It took 10 years for a $9m funding bucket to land just two Illawarra families a home, and then not even in the suburb the scheme was designed to serve.
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A federal government grant awarded to Wollongong City Council in 2013 hoped to house low and middle income families in the growing area of West Dapto, but funds were tied up until 2017.
In the meantime, skyrocketing house prices have locked out households from the target suburb, forcing desperate families to look further afield.
The funds originate in the federal Building Better Regions program, which awarded Wollongong council $9.2 million in 2013 to house low and moderate income families in West Dapto.
Four years later Wollongong council signed an agreement with the federal government to release the funding, which - with accrued interest - totalled $10.4m.
Following a council meeting in 2018, the funding was split into two streams, one to deliver funds to not-for-profit organisations to deliver affordable housing and a second to deliver affordable housing on council-owned land in West Dapto.
The first funds released under the first stream were $4.34m to the Housing Trust in 2019 which will deliver 17 units in two projects in Wollongong and Dapto that began construction this year.
In a second funding round, which specifically targeted projects that demonstrated "innovation", Head Start Homes was the successful tenderer, receiving $1.3m to roll out its Recycling Home Ownership Program as well as its financial advice Empowerment Services.
Under the Recycling Home Ownership program, Head Start Homes acts as a guarantor of a home loan. Head Start Homes provides up to $110,000 - enough to finance a loan of $550,000 - to a participating bank that is held in a term deposit account, earning compounding interest.
Once the homeowner has paid off the bulk of the loan, the funds return to Head Start Homes - with interest - and can be used on future projects.
Wollongong City Council released the seed funds to Head Start Homes in January 2023.
A third funding round for the balance of the funds was also won by Head Start Homes, which received $5m for a new Equity+ scheme as well as further Empowerment Services.
This funding has not yet been released to Head Start Homes.
In addition to the two families that have moved into homes through Head Start Homes' program so far the program also has 52 applicants who are at various stages of the pipeline.
Councillor Linda Campbell, who was a member of the committee that reviewed the advice of council officers to award the funding to Head Start Homes, said the program was progressing well.
"I'm satisfied with the number of applications, I would expect that when they've finished that first period of time, they will have met their targets."
Other councillors, however, were not as pleased with the program. Councillor Mithra Cox said while Council's ability to intervene in the housing market was limited the scheme had not yet had a significant impact on housing affordability.
"It's an absolute drop in the ocean," she said. "A couple of housing units is really not going to touch the sides, but when you think about how much it costs to buy a house, it's difficult to stretch that money to a lot of people."
A challenge for the scheme in addressing the original intention of the program is that housing in the Illawarra, and West Dapto in particular, is increasingly unaffordable.
In January 2022, when Head Start Homes submitted its first tender, the median price of an apartment in Dapto was $549,000, under the loan threshold. Today, the median price of an apartment in Dapto is $649,500 - a nearly 20 per cent increase.
This means that most units in the targeted suburb are out of reach of participants in the program, unless they have additional savings of their own to bring to the table.
At the same time, as interest rates have increased, the borrowing power of low income households has decreased.
A single parent household with one child earning $70,000 a year could borrow up to $425,000 in January 2022 - according to St George Bank's borrowing calculator.
Today, that same household can only borrow up to $305,460.
The wicked problem of the housing crisis has spurred a range of interventions, including in this single grant program, but affordability in the Illawarra continues to be out of reach for many, as highlighted by Anglicare's most recent housing affordability snapshot, which found not a single property was affordable for a single parent with one child on either the JobSeeker payment or the Parenting payment.
Ms Cox said without significant government interventions, which were out of reach of local governments, this would continue to be the case.
"Massively increasing the amount of social housing in the system is one of the key things that would improve housing affordability," she said.
"That said, it's outside of council's remit to do that."
Ms Campbell said the Head Start Homes program was only one of a number of levers that council could pull.
"This is a complicated and complex issue that needs a complicated and complex range of solutions," she said.
"There's room for both [affordable housing and financial support] and there's room for other models too, that we haven't even thought of."
