Uni dorms, granny flats and Airbnb taxes: Tackling Qld’s housing crunch

Tapping into unused student accommodation, granny flat rentals, and a statewide tax on Airbnbs. These are among just some moves now under way, or up for discussion, to tackle Queensland’s housing crunch.

Calls for action from across property and social service groups reached a coordinated peak this week, delivering an “urgent” roundtable convened by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Friday.

Friday’s housing roundtable meeting, attended by 40 people including representatives from government, along with the private and community sectors.

Thirty stakeholders from industry bodies to mayors, along with five government ministers and their department heads, ended up around the table for the two-hour session the state opposition had urged against becoming a talkfest.

While the announcements which followed may not have met the calls of the LNP, others including the Property Council and Queensland Council of Social Services labelled the event “fantastic” or an “important step”.

The past two years have driven huge changes in the national housing market, bringing to a boil affordability and access issues bubbling away for decades.

Record rent hikes and low vacancy rates have coalesced into a “landlords market” in Brisbane outpacing all other Australian capital cities.

At a press conference after Friday’s meeting, Treasurer Cameron Dick laid out further factors squeezing the sector: higher demand through declining numbers of household members and interstate migration, and constraints on construction due to global material and labour shortages pushing building prices up.

The issue of land supply was also raised by the Property Council’s Queensland executive director Jen Williams — the only non-government stakeholder to speak at the post-meeting press conference.

Deputy Premier Steven Miles also touched on the topic, asked about his Thursday decision to step in and direct the Redland City Council to update its housing strategy, something Brisbane’s council has also been — less forcefully — urged to do.

What was not spoken about publicly was the government’s social housing system, an area which has faced recent Auditor-General criticism and long-running expansion calls from groups such as the Queensland Council of Social Services.

And despite recent public campaigning by the opposition and property groups against changes to the state’s land tax scheme, Dick said the issue was not raised during Friday’s meeting.

Stakeholders had mere minutes to lay out their initial ideas, before facilitated discussions about key themes.

“We talked through a range of short, medium and long-term proposals to address housing supply,” Miles told reporters. “And there was a consensus really that ... the best early gains are in repurposing underutilised buildings.”

As a result, the government announced it would refurbish vacant former student accommodation at Griffith University’s Mount Gravatt campus for use as crisis accommodation — expected to be open within six months.

With the Catholic Church also offering up 90 vacant sites that could be used for accommodation, the government has called for other organisations with unused land or buildings to come forward.

Other ideas included pre-fabricated housing that can be quickly built and placed on empty land, giving residents the ability to rent out granny-flats, and laws mandating a portion of social and affordable housing in all new developments.

Taxes on vacant properties or those used as Airbnb-style rentals were also floated, Dick said — the latter by Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner to what the councillor described as “a lot of support”.

Work will now be done behind the scenes to hash out the discussions and outcomes expected from the larger and broader summit to be held on October 20, with Palaszczuk also committing to take federally relevant elements to national cabinet when it meets later this month.

“We will bring together not just the stakeholders that were there today, but also people from across Queensland,” Palaszczuk said. “This issue is not just in the south-east, but it is across the state.”

The Morning Edition newsletter is your guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.