By KATE BANVILLE
STAKEHOLDERS aiming to influence housing policy will gather in the nation’s capital today amid rising homelessness and housing shortages, with councils across regional Queensland calling for greater government intervention.
More than 43,000 people wait for social housing throughout Queensland, according to Queensland Department of Housing data.
Released in November, the data for last year’s June to September quarter saw a rise of 1,600 since the quarter prior.
But these figures don’t capture the full picture of Australia’s housing woes, with mayors throughout regional Queensland concerned that their regions are simply ‘out of sight and out of mind’ for policy makers.
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Since 2020, Queensland’s population has grown by nearly 330,000 to more almost 5.5 million people.
The Flinders Shire in the state’s northwest is among the many local governments across rural and regional Queensland forced to take on the crippling burden of investment, despite housing policy being primarily the responsibility of the state government.
Mayor Jane McNamara said the community was in immediate need of additional houses, despite the roll out of its council run Housing Grant Program.
“In this last term of the council, and the previous term, we actually purchased a suite of houses and also we put up some land for sale last year,” McNamara said.
“Both of which have been fully utilised and purchased as in the land sales, so that people can get a block of land and build their own home.”
Issues like these will be up for debate at the National Regional Housing Summit in Canberra today.
Hosted by Regional Australia Institute, Real Estate Institute of Australia and Master Builders Australia, the national summit aims to unite MPs, industry bodies and not-for-profits in an effort to turn ‘good ideas into reality’.
Regional Queenslanders smashed with nation’s highest rent
It comes as new analysis by Everybody’s Home reveals the top ten regional areas smashed by rent hikes.
Central Queensland topped the list with 21.8% rent increase over a 12 month period, forcing tenants to fork out an additional $77 on average.
“The regional housing summit is an important opportunity to keep the rental crisis conversation alive but there’s only so many times governments can be told of the same solutions,” Everybody’s Home spokesperson Maiy Azize said.
“It’s time for governments to start acting on more ambitious plans to improve housing affordability across the country.
“The federal government must spend more on social housing, end investor handouts, and work with the states and territories to stop unfair rent increases.
Cloncurry Mayor Greg Campbell said regional communities like his were stuck in an economic grid lock as a result of dire housing options.
“We’ve got a fairly urgent need for more housing and a higher standard of housing across the spectrum, whether that’s private rentals, government, employee housing, and social housing,” he said.
“We’ve done our own stocktake and I think there’s a genuine unknown about how much overcrowding there is in social housing, particularly in Cloncurry because people are managing that overcrowding, very sensibly.”
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It prompted echoed calls by local governments throughout Queensland to see immediate investment into state owned housing for government employees.
With a rental vacancy rate of 0.1 per cent, the Goondiwindi Shire Council released its Local Housing Action Plan in an effort to bring reprieve.
As previously reported by the Caller, the plan made 17 recommendations to the Queensland Government including moving government employees out of the existing rental pool.
Campbell argued without these changes, attracting new workers into regional communities like Cloncurry will be almost impossible, despite job vacancies aplenty.
“We’ve actually seen I think it’s about 12 to 13 properties sold off by the state, which were specifically for government employees,” Mayor Campbell said.
“Sensibly, they could have been used as social housing but they were just sold.
“And some of that’s off the back of the main roads staff being slashed by 50 per cent a number of years ago.
“Our Department Primary Industries (DPI) workforce is being decimated from having about six staff here to currently there’s only one so in that respect, the government employee housing demand isn’t as high but it’s also a vicious cycle because the housing stock has been poor and that’s one of the reasons why positions have been hard to fill.”
In the Cook Shire the need is significantly different, even despite the infrastructure damage across the region as a result of Tropical Cyclone Jasper.
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“As far as houses being wiped out we’ve probably got under 50 across the Shire that actually need replacing,” said Mayor Peter Scott.
“But in Cooktown itself we’ve got a commitment from the state government to build 50 new houses around town in the next two years because our basic economy is regional services, health, education, police and service agencies.
“And it’s happening now as we speak, we’ve also got the approval for our hospital to be doubled in size but it’s just a matter of allocating the money in the budget cycle.”
However, the arrangement does result in council’s inability to charge land rates as they would typically do with privately owned land.
“That’s something we had to weigh up as far as social capital and the social improvement with the offset the loss of potential rates,”
“But it’s a no brainer, we just have to get people to town to grow the town itself.
“We can charge service rates like water sewerage rubbish, but unfortunately for the council we can’t charge land rates against the government.
Mayors call for action
The Caller asked each of the mayor’s what proposal they’d like to see championed at the Regional Housing National Summit.
Here’s what they had to say.
Cloncurry Shire Mayor Greg Campbell: “If there is a government commitment to put X number of transportable homes in western areas, make the commitment to build some of them out here which not only reduces transport costs but gives the benefit of the economic growth of the houses being built in our area.”
Flinders Shire Mayor Jane McNamara: “Changes to the First Homeowners Grant to include existing stock, and for it not to be such a restrictive criteria around it.”
Cook Shire Mayor Peter Scott: “Sustainability. Where the inequity really shines is we get these Federal Assistance Grants and so if you’re going to make things a bit easier for councils like mine they really need to be revised.”
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It comes on the back of a 5 pillar plan announced by Queensland Premier Steven Miles earlier this week including a target to build 1 million new homes by 2046.
The plan, worth $3.1 billion promised to increase the duration for the Rental Security Subsidy, raise the Queensland First Home Owner Grant to $30,000, and address homelessness.