Queensland says it’s doing ‘everything’ it can to help with housing. But is it?

Standing in a state-owned modular home building site in Brisbane, Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon was blunt when asked about a new report showing Queensland renters were at the “brutal edge” of the national crunch.

“There are a significant number of pressures on the housing system at the moment,” the youngest member, and only renter, in Steven Miles’ cabinet told journalists, while noting that the report praised of the Labor government housing plan as “nation-leading”.

“That’s why we’re doing everything we can.”

Construction of new homes hit a peak in Australia in 2018-19, but has fallen in the years since.Credit: Dan Peled / Brisbane Times

Except, as the update to last year’s Queensland Council of Social Service-commissioned Blueprint to tackle Queensland’s housing crisis also said, the state government isn’t quite doing everything.

Compiled by researchers at the University of NSW City Futures Research Centre and the University of Queensland, the authors said recent changes to rental laws – ones that restrict the frequency of rent increases and ban rent bidding – were worthwhile.

However, the report said, they fell short of many renters’ demands to stop unlimited rent increases and no-grounds evictions at the end of a fixed-term lease.

“Restricting the frequency of rent rises to annual was a useful move, but stopped well short of providing protection against large hikes that could see some tenants pushed towards homelessness as a result,” the report said.

That tenants were unlikely to invoke some of the rights they had been given if they could be evicted without reason at the end of a lease was another “crucial weakness”, it said.

The report also praised some early moves toward using the planning system to deliver more social and affordable housing through inclusionary zoning requirements.

However, it said the current site-by-site approach was “highly disruptive”, arguing instead for a staged shift to a planning system with a more consistent and widespread approach.

Last year the authors also called for a shift from stamp duty to a broad-based land tax – so far ruled out by government.

The issues everyone says they’re trying to fix are stark, and, as the report says, the most stark for Queensland renters. Median advertised rents were up 49 per cent in Brisbane from the pandemic to December last year, compared to 42 per cent across the other capitals.

Only 10 per cent of private rentals were being offered at fees affordable for low-income households (down from 26 per cent in 2017) and homelessness service caseloads were growing faster than the national average.

And while noting interstate and overseas migration boosts to population growth had played a role in rental demand, the report said growth in Brisbane’s rental stock had now – after average annual growth of 4.5 per cent in the 2010s – remained flat for nearly four years around the 200,000 mark.

According to the government, this is due to the transfer of rental properties to homeowners and “a significant increase in the ‘inventory’ of stock awaiting alteration and repair”. It’s also previously said reductions in people per household had undone more than two years of construction.

“In general, however, recent housing policy development in (and affecting) Queensland is a remarkably positive story,” the report concludes.

QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh said the state LNP opposition must now commit to the same social housing targets as Labor government before October’s election: boosting social housing by 73 per cent by 2046, with an interim goal of 2000 new homes annually by July 2028.

“Otherwise, a change in government could significantly jeopardise an opportunity to deal with Queensland’s housing crisis,” she said, and called for the LNP to also commit to lifting specialist homelessness service funding.

“To make a real difference for renters, both the Queensland government and state opposition need to commit to putting a cap on the cost of renting and end unfair evictions [as well].”

Crisafulli labelled this year’s round of rental reforms evidence Labor was “at war with landlords”, so voters might expect little movement from the LNP – while Labor has also shown it is reluctant to introduce a cap on rental increases.

When Greens MP Amy MacMahon asked Miles in parliament about ending unfair evictions, the premier suggested a policy that meant owners needed to keep renting a property they wanted to sell “would have a dampening effect” on investment in the property market (although research has played down such warnings about Australian tenancy reforms in the past).

Appearing with Scanlon and Miles on Monday, Deputy Premier and Treasurer Cameron Dick said the government would use this month’s budget to allocate $2.8 billion to housing measures across the next 12 months – including up to 600 more modular homes to be under construction by year’s end.

Crisafulli, at a media conference in Mackay where he asked voters to help the LNP’s new candidate Nigel Dalton win the seat off Labor for the first time in more than a century, did not give much extra detail about the party’s plans.

Some of this would come in his budget reply next Thursday, Crisafulli said, including a higher stamp duty threshold, so-far vague commitments around infrastructure for new homes, working with the community housing sector and stopping the use of state housing investment fund cash to buy homes leaving the National Rental Affordability Scheme.

“I intend to use my budget in reply speech to further outline some solutions,” he said.

As home buyers woke up to Monday’s news that median prices in Brisbane had overtaken Melbourne as the second most expensive capital city in the country, Queenslanders struggling to get – and keep – a roof over their heads are certainly waiting for them.