About Us
PARTY BACKGROUND
The Affordable Housing Party is a progressive leaning, non-ideological single issue party dedicated to ending Australia's housing crisis and improving the rights of renters across Australia.
Andrew Potts, a former Greens supporter and former editor of the Sydney Star Observer newspaper, joined the party in 2015 after beginning his own activism on housing affordability and as the party's new National Convenor began a new membership drive, recruiting enough members to lodge paperwork to register the party with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).
The party had been preparing to run Senate candidates in three states and the ACT. However the calling of an early Double Dissolution election in 2016 suspended the processing of the party's registration application by the AEC.
Potts successfully registered the party with the AEC in the middle of Homelessness Week in August of 2017 and the party contested the New England and Bennelong byelections, outpolling six other candidates in New England and four other candidates in Bennelong - many of those from more established parties.
The party ran its first candidates for the Senate in NSW for the 2019 Federal Election, receiving a total of 22,087 votes at the Federal Election in NSW, with 17,330 of those first preference votes.
This was an incredible electoral debut for such a new party, outpolling 16 other parties and 14 independent candidates.
Parties outpolled by the Affordable Housing Party in NSW with first preferences votes included the Socialist Equality Party, Flux, the Socialist Alliance, the Together Party, the Seniors United party, the Better Families party, the Australian Workers Party, the Australian Democrats, the Small Business Party, the Women's Party and the Pirate Party.
The party also outpolled Fraser Anning's candidates in NSW once all preferences were allocated.
However the party was deregistered in early 2022 due to the Australian Government tripling the membership requirement for non-parliamentary parties to be registered to contest elections to 1,500 members.
The party currently has over 1,250 members and is confident of being registered again in time for the 2025 Federal Election and continues to recruit new members towards that goal.