The project, led by University of Tasmania researcher Julia Verdouw, is one of eight priority research projects being conducted in partnership with the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute which aims to help governments at all levels make the best housing policy decisions during and following the coronavirus pandemic.

Dr Verdouw said she would be investigating the consequences of COVID-19 for households.

"We want to understand in a deeper way what housing needs Tasmanians are now facing as a consequence of the pandemic, and how policymakers can best begin to design and implement post-crisis recovery policies that will lead to effective and timely outcomes for households," Dr Verdouw said.

"Our first focus will be on understanding the changes in the housing sector, both in terms of service provision and household need.

"This will include the convening of a housing sector advisory panel to assist in guiding the research.

"The research will also include survey and interview data from a broad range of householders across Tasmania, drawing on The Tasmania Project which is an existing research project being carried out by the Institute for the Study of Social Change at UTAS.

"The project will be carried out in two phases across the remainder of 2020 to capture changes in regional markets and individuals' experiences as the pandemic progresses through its recovery stages."

Dr Verdouw said the study would focus on Tasmania as a whole and the findings of the research would be broadly generalisable to other regions nationally.

"As an example of regional economies, this Tasmanian case study will help policy-makers respond effectively beyond large cities to the needs of regional communities in Australia," she said.

"This research hopes to identify regional housing needs in Tasmania in order to provide real-time recommendations for recovery plans as governments begin to design and implement post-crisis recovery policies.

"This is an important and timely piece of research that sits alongside a number of other AHURI-funded research projects addressing the housing needs that have arisen from the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia.

"Together they will inform a wider and broader discussion that policy-makers in all states and territories can draw on to address recovery pathways across different parts of the housing sector."

Dr Verdouw said it was well understood housing experiences and challenges in regional areas were driven by different issues and had different outcomes than in larger cities, such as Melbourne or Sydney.

"Recovery from a pandemic such as COVID-19 will follow a similar pattern," she said.

"We know, for example, that regional populations tend to be older, with poorer health and lower incomes; housing markets are smaller; and economies are more likely to be based on a key sector like tourism and less resilient to economic shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

"In order to know how to address regional housing impacts from the COVID-19 crisis, we need to better understand housing experiences and outcomes for people living regionally, including what has changed in housing markets and housing services and how people have experienced those changes including ability to access the range of housing emergency and other assistance available to them.

"A pandemic such as COVID-19 is unprecedented and it is difficult to predict what regions will need as they head into recovery."

Dr Verdouw's research, along with the other seven priority research projects, will be published by AHURI in the second half of 2020.