Everything you need to know about the Greens housing standoff with Labor

In a shock move on Monday morning, the minor party - with Coalition support - successfully delayed a Senate vote on Labor's much-anticipated affordable housing package until October, just hours after leaders from the housing and homelessness sector called on Parliament to pass it.

The move kicked off a week of outrage and uproar from the Albanese government, ending in accusations the party was bullying first-term MP and Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather.

Senator Don Farrell called the Greens and the Coalition the "axis of evil". Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the party cared "more about TikTok than housing stock". And Prime Minister Anthony Albanese used question time to read out lines from an article Chandler-Mather had written on the legislation, claiming it exposed "the political motive of the Greens political party and this member in opposing public housing".

The Coalition have all but checked out of the housing conversation, insisting they won't pass Labor's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund (HAFF) over concerns that it will worsen inflation.

But this has put Greens in the balance of power in the Senate; a party that this week has proven itself willing to do just about anything in the dogged pursuit of its own campaign for renters' rights.

Later on in the week, the Greens announced they had secured a Senate inquiry into the rental crisis. That same day, the party helped the Coalition further its attempts to look into the ACT's forced takeover of Calvary Hospital, raising questions of whether a deal had been done.

For many in the housing and homelessness sector - a sector starved of adequate funding for decades - the move to delay a vote on the legislation was a blow.

So why are the Greens - a party that has prided itself on its pursuit of social justice - reluctant to pass Labor's package? Is this just a case of parties playing politics?

There are actually three pieces of affordable housing legislation the Albanese government is trying to pass in this package, but the one everyone is focusing on is the proposed $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.

The fund would invest $10 billion, and spend at least $500 million a year in returns on social and affordable housing projects. Labor promises the fund will help build 30,000 new social and affordable properties in the first five years.

Of these, 20,000 would be social housing properties, 5,000 of which would be allocated for women and children fleeing domestic violence and low-income older women at risk of homelessness. The remaining 10,000 would be affordable housing properties available for frontline workers.

Not exactly. Here's where things get a bit complicated, but stay with me: the fund wouldn't directly pay for upfront construction costs (with exceptions). Most housing providers wouldn't receive any money from the fund until the property is built and has a tenant.

Instead, private investors or community organisations could provide upfront capital, local government could provide land, and developers could take out a construction loan in the interim, knowing that they would later be paid returns from the HAFF.

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Greens leader Adam Bandt has likened the future fund to "gambling" taxpayers' money on the stock market, with no guarantee of returns.

But many leaders in the housing and homelessness sector support the model. Emma Greenhalgh, chief executive officer of National Shelter, said while upfront capital grants are great, "for those of us who have been in the sector for a long time, [they] come and go depending on the government".

"I'm fully aware of all the arguments that we wouldn't fund schools and hospitals and everything this way. But for me, I think it really comes back to the fact that housing does not have bilateral support," Greenhalgh said, noting the Coalition have refused to support the HAFF.

The Greens have two demands for the government in exchange for their support to pass the housing package: guarantee at least $2.5 billion a year to be spent directly on public and affordable housing; and offer a $1 billion annual incentive to state and territory governments to implement a two-year rent freeze and ongoing rent caps.

But Dr Michael Fotheringham, managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, has cautioned both demands, saying "while more money would be better in theory", the construction industry may not have capacity or materials at the moment to build more homes.

He added while "tenants need a better run clearly", a national two-year rent freeze "is not practical and is likely to discourage investment and encourage people to sell up the properties ... creating further turmoil".

Fotheringham advocated instead for rent caps similar to what we have in the ACT, which limits annual rent increases to 110 per cent of the consumer price index.

Wendy Hayhurst, chief executive officer of the National Community Housing Industry Association, said even if the package passes in October, this could still mean a further six-month delay on homes being built due to Christmas.

The Greens have argued even if the HAFF passed, it "won't see a single home built until 2025".

But it is understood 20,000 properties have been earmarked for the HAFF, 12,000 of which would be ready to start construction within the next year.

Charles Northcote, chief executive officer of BlueChp - a social, affordable and disability housing provider - said his staff had spent the last 18 months preparing 3,000 properties, which "may not happen [now] because we may miss the boat".

"You have to renegotiate all the transactions, you have to get the financing and all those structures need to be put in," he said.

Chandler-Mather has dismissed the sectors' warnings, saying "thousands of homes" were being built "because the Greens stood up to a Labor government", crediting his party for a $2 billion for social and affordable housing injection Labor announced last weekend.

"With all due respect to the housing sector, they've been calling on the Greens to pass this bill for months and if we had listened to them only weeks ago, then we wouldn't have secured $2 billion right now to accelerate the build of social housing across the country," Mr Chandler-Mather said this week.

Do the Greens genuinely care about renters? Probably. Chandler-Mather himself has been a life-long renter and spoken passionately about Australia's broken housing system.

But the party has a lot to gain politically from pursuing rent freezes.

Just months ago, Bandt declared the Greens would become "the party of renters" at the next election. The Canberra Times understands the party is currently fundraising for organisers to lead their ongoing campaigning in six key lower house seats: the three Queensland seats they won at the last election, and three undeclared ones.

Census data shows more than 40 per cent of households in the Greens' seats of Brisbane and Griffith rent.

Bandt has already announced the party's federal candidate in the NSW Labor seat of Richmond - a seat with one of the highest rates of renter stress in the country - saying the Greens were ready to "hit the streets" as the "only party fighting for renters and climate action".

The party is also door-knocking on housing policy in Labor electorates, and handing out cards saying "Rent freeze now. Ask me how" at property inspections.

But what is good for the Greens isn't necessarily good for Labor.

The Greens want balance of power, while Labor want government. Only around a third of households rent their home, according to the latest census, meaning there are probably more votes nationally in allowing property and rental prices to go up, than there are in keeping them down.

There has been a lot of talk this week about whether delaying Labor's housing bill could help trigger a double dissolution, allowing the Albanese government to dissolve the Senate and call an election.

This can only happen when a bill is rejected by the Senate, or fails to pass, after two attempts. The housing bill has technically been delayed twice in the Senate (Labor tried to call it on for a vote in May).

The Greens said they believed delaying the bill wasn't the same as refusing to pass it.

But Albanese on Friday revealed the government had received advice from the solicitor general agreeing that delaying the bill twice constituted a failure to pass the legislation and could be grounds for a double dissolution.

Does this mean, though, the government will ask the Governor-General to dissolve the Senate? Watch this space.