When Australia talks about housing, the conversation usually circles the same pressure points: supply targets, construction costs, interest rates, planning delays, and whether first home buyers can still get a foot in the door.

In today’s episode of The Good Builder Podcast, Glenn Crawford, Director at Harnest, shifted the lens. He argued that housing is not only a market problem. It is a stability problem, and for many Australians, stability is the difference between coping and falling over.

“Housing touches a human right,” Crawford said. “If you don’t have security of home, the foundational piece of humanity… it’s just so difficult.”

The part of the market that gets missed

Az framed the discussion around what he called the “missing middle”, people who are not eligible for traditional public housing, but also cannot keep up with private rents, deposits, and rising build costs.

Crawford’s view was simple: there is not one housing system. There are multiple “spectrums”, from public housing through to affordable, key worker, disability accommodation, and then the private market. The challenge is not only building more homes, but building the right types of homes, for the right people, and making them last.

At Harnest, that means focusing on what it calls affordable and accessible housing, working with government, community housing organisations, and other partners rather than building directly for retail buyers. 

Who is Harnest, and where do they fit?

Harnest describes itself as the specialist affordable and accessible housing division of the Mazzei Group, a broader construction group that also includes Mazzei and Cecure. 

On Mazzei’s own “About” page, the group positions Harnest as “one of Victoria’s largest providers of social housing and SDA accommodation”, delivering hundreds of homes across Melbourne and regional Victoria with a mix of government and community housing clients. 

Harnest operates from offices in Hawthorn (Melbourne) and Adelaide, reflecting its active footprint across at least Victoria and South Australia. 

“The building is the easy bit”

One of Crawford’s most consistent themes was that construction is only one part of the solution. The hardest part is everything that comes before the slab goes down: policy settings, funding models, procurement rules, and aligning the right stakeholders.

“It’s all of the stuff in front of it that is the challenge,” he said. “The political environment, the non-for-profits, the social impact funds… the various different communities… you can get lost in it.”

His point was not that building is simple, but that the bottleneck in inclusive housing is often structural: how projects get financed, how risks are shared, and how long-term outcomes are measured.

Why “cheap now” can become “expensive later”

Crawford warned that the industry often undervalues the long-term health of homes. In the rush to meet volume targets, the bigger question can get pushed aside: are we building homes that will still perform in 20 years?

He raised basic examples that most builders and suppliers will recognise:

• indoor air quality and lower-VOC materials
• “airtight” homes that actually perform, rather than trapping moisture and creating future defects
• spending slightly more upfront to reduce maintenance and call-backs later

The logic is straightforward: housing is a long-life asset. If you cut corners to hit a price today, you may be creating a much larger repair bill tomorrow, especially for government and community housing owners that hold stock for decades.

The money question: why feasibility dictates everything

Inclusive housing lives and dies on feasibility. Unlike private market projects, many community housing and social housing projects are tied to reduced rents. That means projects often need some form of “top up” to stack up financially, whether through grants, philanthropic support, or structured funding programs.

Crawford argued that Australia also needs more institutional capital to see inclusive housing as a legitimate asset class.

His framing was that if large pools of capital treat housing more like infrastructure, they may accept lower yields, which can unlock more supply. But institutions also prefer scale, often wanting to deploy very large amounts of money at once, which creates a mismatch with smaller, fragmented project pipelines.

That “dance”, as he called it, is increasingly relevant as governments push major funding mechanisms aimed at accelerating social and affordable housing delivery.

One example is the Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF), which Housing Australia describes as a $10 billion investment vehicle intended to support 40,000 social and affordable homes over five years from 2024, using a mix of loans and grants. 

Modular housing: promise, but not a silver bullet (yet)

Az challenged Crawford on modular and offsite construction, a topic many in the industry see as a potential breakthrough for speed, cost control, and labour constraints.

Crawford’s response was measured: modular has a role, especially in remote delivery (including some First Nations contexts) and for projects where time-to-revenue matters. But he also acknowledged a reality that surprises many people the first time they price it properly: modular is not automatically cheaper.

In his view, scale is the key. More volume means better repetition, more efficient manufacturing, and eventually lower costs. But the broader site costs still exist: civil works, driveways, landscaping, and all the finishing trades that often cannot be completed until after transport and cranage.

He also pointed to market acceptance as a limiting factor: modular outcomes can require people to be more comfortable with standardised, repeatable designs rather than fully bespoke housing.

How Harnest evolved: from government work to a broader portfolio

Crawford described Harnest’s early years as heavily concentrated in Victorian Government work, a strong base but also a risk if political priorities or key relationships changed.

From there, the company widened its focus into community housing providers and, critically, the disability housing market, including Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA). That shift forced a new level of commercial discipline.

Crawford said the first year in disability work was “really painful” because the business underestimated the complexity: more sophisticated clients, tighter contractual environments, and additional compliance requirements.

That experience triggered internal changes, including bringing in design management capability earlier in projects, so problems were solved in the “boardroom” rather than on site.

It also reshaped how the business thinks about procurement. Crawford criticised hard tendering as a “race to the bottom” that can destroy outcomes on both sides: builders win work too cheaply, then spend the job fighting to recover margin. Instead, Harnest prioritises repeat relationships and partnership-style engagements.

Trauma-informed and culturally informed design: start with who is moving in

On design, Crawford brought the conversation back to basics.

For First Nations housing, he said trust and consultation are central, and the right people must lead those discussions. In plain terms: non-Indigenous builders should not assume they know what culturally safe housing looks like. The role of delivery partners is to support and enable the process, not dominate it.

For disability accommodation, he described a different kind of complexity: many stakeholders, many needs, and finite budgets. The key is filtering what matters most for the resident, within the constraints that keep projects viable.

His “quality barometer” was simple and memorable: would you hand this home over to your mum? If the answer is no, fix it.

Sustainability and resilience as part of the brief

On the sustainability front, Harnest publicly lists priorities such as managing waste and pollution, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and building housing resilient to climate impacts. It also notes membership in the Melbourne CitySwitch program through the broader Mazzei Group. 

In the context of inclusive housing, sustainability is not just values-driven. It is operational: better-performing homes can reduce energy costs for occupants and reduce maintenance pressure for housing owners.

Advice to builders considering the sector: start small, and expect a learning curve

When asked what he would tell builders who want to step into social, affordable, or disability housing, Crawford’s advice was direct: have a go, but go in with your eyes open.

He highlighted several practical realities:

• government work requires specific prequalification and panel processes
• contract structures matter, and builders need to understand what they are signing
• early projects may not be highly profitable because capability must be built
• values alignment matters as much as capability because the wrong work can drag a business into poor outcomes

Crawford also stressed a point that translates to any builder trying to stay solvent and deliver quality: financial acumen is often underestimated, and getting the right people around you can change the trajectory of the whole business.

A call for more industry collaboration

Throughout the episode, both Az and Crawford returned to the same closing idea: Australia will not solve housing affordability and inclusive housing need through isolated efforts.

Crawford’s argument was that most people want to help, but the pathway has to be clear, and collaboration has to be normalised, between builders, investors, service providers, charities, and government.

For industry leaders with resources, he pointed to support for pilot projects, especially in First Nations housing, and to the broader need for funding and partnerships that address wraparound services in domestic and family violence recovery, where housing is only one part of a much bigger solution.

It is a serious conversation, but also a practical one. If housing is the base layer that lets everything else work, then who we build for, and how well we build, is not a side issue. It is the main issue.

Author: TGB Editorial