Gold Coast mum Emily Wright told she may have to go to Alpha or Charleville to find affordable rental

A Gold Coast local with a long history of welcoming tourists says she was stunned to be told she’d need to go to remote outback towns to have a chance of finding a rental.

AN ex-Gold Coast visitor attraction star now helping the next generation of schoolteachers has been told to relocate to a remote town like Charleville to get a rental.

Emily Wright, whose daughter Dotti is a former School Captain at Benowa State School, was stunned to be advised she had little other choice due to spiralling rental costs but to quit town.

Ms Wright has been desperately trying to find a rental for herself, 13-year-old Dotti, her 18-month-old son and their pet dog after learning the lease on their Highland Park home would not be renewed. It had been sold to an owner-occupier.

The former Outback Spectacular star believes many letting agents are not even considering her applications because she is a single parent.

“Single mothers and their children are being told, you are not valuable in our community, go and move to Charleville,” she said.

“... I can pay the rent. I have perfect rental history. But they’re not even reading my references.

“I’m not making it anywhere near the top of the pile because the real estate agents and the property owners, they’re not looking at us.

“I’ve been applying for months and my referees haven’t even got a phone call.

“If they rang our referees they’d see we’ve never been in arrears, we’re incredible tenants, but how would they know, because they just keep giving it to dual income people that are coming in from interstate.”

Emily Wright and her daughter Dotti, 13. Picture: Glenn Hampson.

Ms Wright said she contacted the Department of Housing to see if she qualified for any assistance. She was told she did not, and after explaining her income to the official, was advised she would have to look far beyond the Gold Coast for affordable housing.

“The Department of Housing was like, you could get somewhere if you consider moving far away to places like Alpha or Charleville,” she said.

Charleville is 800km west of the Gold Coast and takes at least nine hours to reach by car. Alpha, a small town of 559 people, is 1048km away, and takes at least 12 hours to reach.

“They told me there was a house in Alpha for $230 a week,” Ms Wright said.

“I looked at that. The nearest childcare is two hours away and there’s a runway there for the Royal Flying Doctors.

“There’s a school for prep to year 12 that has forty kids in it, there’s no prep for two hours, and I can’t get internet. So I’d have to quit my job, quit my study. If one of my kids got sick I’d have to wait until it was serious enough to call the Royal Flying doctors.”

Where Alpha and Charleville are located in relation to the Gold Coast.

Ms Wright said leaving the Gold Coast would be devastating for her small family, in particular her daughter, who was now a Grade 7 student at Benowa State High School.

“She has got nothing but As at Benowa High. She’s in the Waldorf Excellence Program, which she had to fight to get into,” she said.

“So she’s got the one teacher, with the one group of classmates, for years 7, 8 and 9.

“As a student with a learning disability, that’s the difference between her succeeding and not.

“This program allows my dyslexic child to be an A grade student.”

Ms Wright appealed to landlords and letting agents to give single parents a chance, saying they often had perfect references and plenty to offer the community.

She also said many had become single parents due to leaving domestic violence situations, meaning a terrible message was being sent if they were not able to get rentals.

“When most of the single parents have left a DV situation what you’re sending is a clear message to our community, you are better off staying in your DV situation because if you leave it, you will be forced out of your community,” Ms Wright said.

“At some point our community, the people who own these homes who live in our community, the people who work in these real estate agencies that work in our community, they need to stop and think, what kind of community do they want to live in?”

The main street in Charleville.

Ms Wright said that she had been “proud” to be the face of the Gold Coast, working an average of 65 hours a week welcoming tourists to major attractions including Outback Spectacular, Wet’n’Wild and Melba’s in Surfers Paradise.

But now she had children, she felt she was being cast aside.

“When you’re on the Gold Coast and you’re young and you’re childless and you’re working and working and working, no one can get enough of you. But the minute you’ve given everything to this community and you’re in a small position of vulnerability, at the moment, the whole place has just turned into this money-hungry realm and you’re gone,” she said.

“But what kind of community do you want this to be in ten years? Because me and my daughter have so much to offer.

“If you’re telling the school captain of Benowa State School she’s not valuable and she needs to leave the community because she doesn’t have a dad, well there’s something very very wrong with the fabric of us socially at the moment.”

Deputy Mayor Donna Gates talks about the new budget.. Picture: Glenn Hampson.

Deputy Mayor Donna Gates said she was very concerned to hear about Ms Wright’s situation, showing it highlighted the issues being faced by many long-term locals.

“There’s not a lot that we can do at a local government level but I believe it’s important that we all recognise the impact the shortage in housing supply is having on many,” Cr Gates said.

“Not just those reliant upon welfare, but also hardworking Gold Coast residents who simply love living in this city.”

On Friday Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk chaired a roundtable meeting on the housing crisis.

The meeting was a “first step” towards a Queensland Housing Summit, to be held in October.

“Nothing is more important than having a roof over your head - it’s a basic need – and the stories of people without secure housing are heartbreaking,” Ms Palaszczuk said.

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Originally published as Gold Coast mum Emily Wright told she may have to go to Alpha or Charleville to find affordable rental