Michele Adair’s home truths on Australia’s affordable housing crisis, and the challenge boards face fixing the problem

Women on Boards: Leader, directors & subject matter experts in conversation with Claire Braund

Michele Adair is a long-time WOB member with great passion for housing all Australians.

As Chair of Community Housing Industry Association NSW and CEO of affordable housing provide Housing Trust on the NSW South Coast, Michelle’s goal is to ensure all Australians have access to the basic human right to somewhere to live.

Aligning her board roles with her values and purpose is very important to Michele. In this podcast she tells Claire how she was drawn to these roles because of the diversity of policy and the complexity of the policy framework.

Michele’s interest in social housing also comes from personal experience, after she found herself a single mother with two young children struggling to keep a roof over their heads in her 30s. It was, she says, ‘a pretty tough gig’ getting by on just $2 a week after paying her rent.

It’s a situation, says Michele, that could happen to any woman - our mums, our grandmothers, our aunties, the ladies next door. “Our housing system is broken and in desperate need of reform and we’re not even scratching the surface,” she says.

A paradigm shift – from governments, the private sector and for-purpose organisations – is needed, she says, to address the housing shortage problem which currently sees 180,000 people on the social housing waitlist.

In the podcast Michele also talks about what’s involved being on the board of affordable housing organisations - from overseeing huge commercial developments and joint ventures to the joy of giving keys to a home to someone who desperately needs it.

LinkedIn: Michele Adair | Claire Braund (host)

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