Editorial: More help must come for those in housing need

The urgency and scale of Queensland’s housing crisis has been lost on its politicians, who earn a good wage and live comfortably, writes the editor.

The dire nature of the housing crisis facing Queenslanders today was foreshadowed more than a decade ago, but the eight-year-old Palaszczuk government has done far too little to address it. Now the state is in the grip of an accommodation shortage that is massive, multifaceted and deepening every day.

As interest rates continue to rise, so does the number of us having to live rough. More Queenslanders are sleeping in cars and tents than we have seen in generations.

And it is hardly surprising. As we reported this week, the decline in rental availability in Brisbane is staggering. In January, there were just 2845 rental properties available in a city with more than 2.4 million residents. Meanwhile, rental prices have jumped by almost 25 per cent in 12 months – and so $100 for a pretty average $400 weekly lease. The average weekly asking rent in Brisbane is now $594 (for combined dwellings), which means it is now more expensive to rent here than in Melbourne, a city twice our size.

This is a supply-and-demand debacle that is causing enormous heartache – and it is set to worsen. Already desperate Queenslanders are applying, without success, for a shrinking number of rental properties. It is now not uncommon for would-be tenants submitting more than 100 applications. Some do not receive a single reply.

Tenants Queensland and the Queensland Council of Social Services (QCOSS) have been imploring Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk to do anything she can to limit the size and frequency of rent hikes, but the government’s response has been to do little more than ask landlords to play nice.

A recent example was Deputy Premier Steven Miles saying: “We understand costs are going up and there is a reasonable level of rent increase that is fair and necessary. But over and above that, I’d urge them to be much more considerate of their fellow Queenslanders.”

But with interest rates rising even quicker than rents, there would not be a single tenant in Queensland holding their breath waiting for their landlord to listen to Mr Miles.

The Premier last week guffawed when she pointed out she had been in office now for “many, many years”. Well, this week it is eight – with the Palaszczuk government elected in 2015. Five years before that, the National Housing Supply Council’s state of supply report warned that almost one-third of Australia’s housing shortage was in Queensland. It predicted that by 2029, the state would suffer a shortage of almost 200,000 homes, blaming poor planning, zoning and development approval bottlenecks.

Nothing significant has been done by the government in response over the “many many years” since.

After the state’s auditor-general last year warned that the Palaszczuk government was failing to build enough social housing to meet demand, The Courier-Mail launched our Hitting Home campaign. It urged the government to consider a raft of ideas to curb the widespread housing crisis, including utilising vacant properties, unlocking more land, adjusting tax settings to encourage build-to-rent apartment blocks, and building 5000 new social housing homes each year.

Following the campaign, the government agreed to a housing summit in late October. Following that, the Premier pledged to spend $56m on measures to primarily provide short-term relief for people at risk of homelessness.

These included rental assistance, targeted loans and temporary emergency accommodation.

The Premier also announced a doubling to $2bn of the state’s Housing Investment Fund – increasing the money available from it to $130m each year – and a range of changes to the way the bureaucracy focuses on the delivery of housing to the community.

But as QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh observed at the time, big problems remain.

There are, for example, about 46,000 people on Queensland’s social housing register waitlist who need homes now. That fact has prompted calls from the Property Council for incentives to promote build-to-rent dwellings to be delivered immediately.

But again, we wait. It seems the urgency and scale of the state’s housing crisis has been lost on our politicians – who earn a good wage and live comfortably, and have solid contacts should they find themselves locked out of the rental market. But more and more of the constituents who will hold a pencil at the ballot box in October next year are hurting. So much more needs to be done.