A new social housing financial intermediary, with the imprimatur of the public sector, is lumbering into being. Under an aggregator model, this new entity would replace (in theory at a lower cost) sources of finance now met by other funders.A "Housing Bank" may not be either the result or its initial name, but an aggregator model for mobilising capital toward housing stock for the less affluent was the key measure in a multi-Treasury study for the Affordable Housing Working Group.The Housing Finance Corporation in the United Kingdom is one potential model for this new public sector outfit in Australia.A government-backed financier of that type would have "the potential to reach significant scale," the report for heads of Treasuries observed.The central remit of this financier would be to consolidate and refinance borrowings across the community housing sector.The study noted "feedback from finance and community housing stakeholders is that the finance provided by a housing bond aggregator would be used to replace existing bank finance, rather than be used as project-based construction finance."The finance from the housing bond aggregator "would not be used to finance the construction of affordable housing directly [but] it would increase the borrowing capacity of affordable housing providers once new dwellings are generating rental cash flows, lower interest costs for community housing providers [as well as] lower refinancing risks," the report said.This, in turn, "allows them to develop more affordable housing."Commonwealth and State and Territory governments "were projected to spend approximately A$10 billion on affordable housing in 2015/16", the report explained."Despite the significant amount of funding, waiting lists for public housing remain above 150,000 nationally, although they have declined by around 12,500 between 2011 and 2015."The aggregator model was one of four models canvassed in an issues paper, released in February 2016.Among the selling points in the Treasury study for an aggregator were:?    "it creates a market for private affordable housing investment that both normalises and expands flows of capital to the industry;"?    "it best addresses the barriers of return and liquidity by providing an instrument that is understood by sophisticated investors as a fixed income investment;" and?    "Due to its financial profile, it can be easily traded in a secondary market and would be seen as an attractive low-risk financial product."The UK's Housing Finance Corporation is "referred to as the exemplar of the bond aggregator model," the study said.THFC is an independent, specialist, not-for-profit organisation that makes loans to regulated housing associations that provide affordable housing throughout the United Kingdom. "THFC is a debt-matching organisation that offers long-tenor loans to regulated housing associations, efficiently passing through funds raised via credit-rated 30-year bonds in the capital markets."The study is opaque on the bond tenor appropriate for an Australian version of THFC, but points to a mechanism that could funnel longer-dated housing bonds to investors.Treasury described it as: "undertaking a suite of complementary reforms to make affordable housing commercially attractive to institutional investors."