Miles must raise the roof on Tuesday with Qld’s long-awaited housing plan

“Everyone deserves a roof over their head.” It’s a quote often reached for by Australian politicians, which suggests they do, in fact, see housing as a human right.

But the question being asked from kitchen tables to boardrooms is what they can or are willing to do to make that a reality rather than a lofty slogan.

Many argue the housing crunch has been coming for decades.Credit: Dan Peled

In Queensland, it’s been almost 18 months since then-premier Annastacia Palaszczuk first convened an “urgent” meeting involving government, private and community sector figures to dig into the pressures driving prices to record highs and squeezing availability to similar lows for renters and would-be home buyers.

In his first major appearance as her successor, Steven Miles will unveil his government’s long-awaited and much-touted Homes for Queenslanders plan to a crowd at the Queensland Media Club in South Bank on Tuesday. Many more eyes will be watching.

Much has been written about the reasons for the housing crunch, which was thrust into sharp focus at the tail end of the pandemic, but which many argue has been coming for decades.

A declining state and federal government focus on public and social housing, policies that encouraged a generation to treat property as an investment, and managing affordability issues by handing money to buyers have all been cited as possible causes.

But also: house prices leaving incomes behind since the 2000s and not looking back; fewer people in households; inadequate protections for tenants as they form a growing portion of the population; and, in some areas, the appearance of short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb.

The state housing meetings have seen proposed fixes thrown around in response.

Some, such as measures to boost public and private construction of social and affordable housing despite construction pressures, have had significant sums of money made available and new policies floated. Homelessness support, too.

As have further long-awaited reforms for renters – though they still don’t address some calls from advocates and continue to draw the ire of the real estate sector. Many have been drip-fed in the past week ahead of Miles’ speech on Tuesday.

Others, like repurposing underutilised buildings, taxes on vacant properties or short-stay accommodation providers such as Airbnb, or dealing with land approved by councils but not yet built on, appear to have fallen off the radar or out of favour.

More, like capping rents or lifting taxes on interstate landlords, were walked back or undone under political pressure.

Miles will announce the state’s next move on the short-stay rental front as part of the new plan: a registration scheme recommended by last year’s government-commissioned report to better monitor the impact of the sector and allow councils to take their own better-informed approaches.

Nothing has been said yet about the third of the plan’s “five pillars”: helping first homeowners into the market (one of the state and federal policies some point to as pushing prices higher).

Lifting the First Home Owners Scheme cut-off from $750,000 is one of the few concrete housing policies of the state LNP opposition under David Crisafulli to date, too.

Greens MPs have been introducing ultimately doomed bills to spark conversations about taxes on vacant properties, freezing rents for two years, and forcing developers to build a proportion of social housing.

Politicians at a council level have also been throwing ideas around. As has the federal Labor government, while remaining resolute in its lack of appetite to push past stage 3 tax changes to the housing-related policies it dumped before the 2022 election, but which many suggest are key.

Key, that is, to helping unpick the vision of a home as an investment, rather than a basic necessity – or at least flip the balance the other way.

Whether we as a country can truly shift our thinking remains to be seen.

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