SEQ’s housing shortage won’t be fixed soon. These two numbers explain why

When Julie Saunders got up to speak at a Property Council function on Tuesday morning, she highlighted two numbers that together painted a drab picture of Queensland’s housing supply.

Saunders, an urban planner and director at consulting firm Urbis, chairs the Queensland Housing Supply Expert Panel, which gives the government independent advice on the tricky question of how to ensure Queensland’s growing population has somewhere to live.

South-east Queensland needs 34,000 new housing lots each year. It’s currently getting just 18,000.Credit: Louie Douvis

The first number she shared – 34,000 – was how many lots of land needed to be approved for construction in the south-east annually to meet state government targets in the ShapingSEQ 2023 regional plan.

The second – 18,000 – was how many are currently being approved by councils.

“I had a look at the production rate last night,” she said. “[It’s] around 18,000 [annually] over the past four years.”

The federal government has offered $6 billion as an incentive for states to build 1.2 million homes. In Queensland, that means more than 49,000 new houses and 53,000 social homes over 20 years.

But it’s not just houses and towers that need to be built.

Saunders said the south-east traditionally had “quite a homogeneous approach of ‘houses and high rises’,” and that more housing diversity was “critically important”.

“Our sophistication and acceptance by communities around a whole range of [housing types] … needs to improve, and local government is critical to lead that agenda.”

While 95 per cent of housing is provided by the private sector, Saunders said local councils regulated approvals and zonings. They therefore had a key role in ensuring more townhouses, units and other types of housing are thrown into the mix.

Mayors Jon Raven (Logan), Peter Flannery (Moreton Bay) and Teresa Harding (Ipswich) said their councils were providing 13,000 of the 18,000 new lots approved every year.Credit: Tony Moore

Also at the Property Council function were the mayors of three fast-growing council areas: Ipswich, Logan and Moreton Bay, on Brisbane’s western, southern and northern boundaries.

Logan Mayor Jon Raven said his city was close to its target of providing the number of lots set by the ShapingSEQ plan.

“We did 4500 lots last year, and our target is 5000, so we are doing OK,” he said.

However, he said the funding model under which councils received annual financial assistance grants was broken.

Moreton Bay Mayor Peter Flannery said the 2020-2022 COVID-19 pandemic affected supply lines and lifted construction material costs, as labour was “sucked into” larger government building projects.

“That sucked up employment opportunities for people who would be building smaller infrastructure projects around our areas,” he said.

“A few of those issues lined up to make the crisis we are in now worse than it could have been.”

All mayors gave their own examples of problems getting infrastructure to greenfield developments.

Ipswich Mayor Teresa Harding said the gap between what is provided by other levels of government and what infrastructure costs councils is passed on to ratepayers through rate rises.

Local Government Association of Queensland chief executive Alison Smith agreed, adding that the poor supply of project engineers, tradies and apprentices was also delaying housing starts.

“I think the federal government has realised that the model is broken, because it has announced a federal inquiry into the sustainability of local governments,” Smith said.

“The Local Government Association has already made a detailed submission. We are looking to achieve an increase in the ‘untied’ amount of money that councils can use to spend on the individual priorities of their council areas.”