Unity Housing’s commitment to ESG

Unity Housing is committed to measuring, reporting and managing our progress in the emerging metrics of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) outcomes. We are an early adopter of the ESG Reporting Standard for Australian Community Housing, actively collaborating in the development of a national standard that will provide clarity, accountability and comparable data for community housing stakeholders.

We are preparing for compliance with the future ESG legislative requirements but going beyond that, we are on a journey to deliver improved outcomes for our tenants and their communities and to minimise any negative impacts of our operations on the environment.

To achieve this across the broader community housing sector, Unity Housing is championing the adoption of ESG measures through our sector leadership role and by advocating to and supporting other organisations to do so.

Sector leadership

As a leading organisation in the community housing sector, Unity Housing is:

  • one of three community housing organisations represented on the Interim Governance Group for the development and implementation of the ESG Standard for Australian Community Housing.
  • an early adopter of Version 1 of the ESG Standard, reporting on all 40 criteria in the first two annual ESG audits.
  • a financial supporter and participant in the process of developing Version 2 of the ESG Standard.

ESG Reporting at Unity Housing

The ESG Reporting Standard for Australian Community Housing consists of three dimensions:

  1. Environmental
  2. Social
  3. Governance

The three dimensions consists of several themes, each of which has a number of quantitative or qualitative reporting criteria, as outlined below.

Our ESG road ahead

Unity Housing is committed to measuring, managing and reporting ESG outcomes and will:

  • adopt Version 2 of the ESG Reporting Standard for Australian Community Housing (and future versions as they evolve)
  • continue to undertake annual ESG audits and report our results for collation into the Annual ESG Review for the Australian Community Housing Sector
  • seek to improve our organisation’s year-on-year performance against the criteria of the ESG Reporting Standard
  • actively participate in the Interim Governance Group for the development and implementation of the ESG Standards for Australian Community Housing
  • advocate and support the broad adoption of the ESG Standard for Australian Community Housing across the community housing sector.

For any enquiries regarding Unity Housing’s ESG work, please contact us at esg@unityhousing.org.au