Where will 900,000 migrants find a rental amid housing crisis?
Australia can expect an extra 650,000 migrants this financial year and next, boosting the number of residents by 900,000 – but where are these people going to sleep, asks Kylie Lang.
Kylie Lang
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We’re told to brace for a population explosion, like it’s a good thing, by addressing a skills shortage.
Australia can expect an extra 650,000 migrants this financial year and next, boosting the number of residents by 900,000 – but where are these people going to sleep?
In tents or cars, like the growing number of Queenslanders battling homelessness?
I’m not against migrants – the tapestry of our nation would be far less rich without them, and let’s face it, most of us came here from somewhere else at some point in time.
But without a well-conceived plan on how this “surprise” population boom is going to play out, we are likely to be significantly worse off.
When Federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers announced the migration increase this week, he said it would be a key consideration in the May 9 budget.
It needs to be – because population growth without the commensurate provision of housing and critical infrastructure and services, including health, will be an enormous drain on an economy – and a nation – already reeling from the ravages of Covid and pre-pandemic pressures.
Here in Queensland, the government’s Housing Roundtable – called after a campaign by this newspaper to address the accommodation crisis – has reinforced a number of troubling things.
One is that the Palaszczuk government is clutching at straws, stabbing in the dark, or whatever phrase you like to indicate that it has no real appreciation of the scope of the problem or how to address it.
The Premier’s ridiculous rent freeze concept that, after public outcry, quickly morphed into another unworkable idea of yearly rental increase caps are examples of this.
As I’ve written before, punishing investors will only exacerbate the rental shortage by forcing them to sell up or remove their properties from the rental pool. Either way, that means more people turfed out of homes.
The other thing plaguing Queensland’s worsening situation is that whatever the government does now will not be enough.
Instead of playing catch up, it should have acted years ago. It’s not as if key stakeholders haven’t fired off multiple warnings.
Keen to find a way forward, I had a frank conversation on Friday with the Housing Industry Association’s Queensland executive director, Mike Roberts.
The HIA – which represents the residential construction industry – has been lobbying for a medium-long term plan. And this, not only from federal and state governments but also local councils.
Mr Roberts says the migration surge is “a double-edged sword”.
“Every business you talk to is struggling for skilled labour – actually, make that any labour – and while bringing people in from overseas is a relatively quick fix, the flip side is we have a housing shortage.
“You can bring them here but we have nowhere to put them.” Boom!
He says migration without overdue changes to planning frameworks will “only contribute to the issue we have now with people struggling to find a rental or a place to buy”.
After sitting at the Premier’s roundtable this week, Mr Roberts reckons there has been a “fair bit of head-in-the-sand approach to planning for growth over the last 10 years”.
“We need a strategy that incorporates a broad range of initiatives, some aimed at tackling the emergency now and others for the longer term to ensure we don’t face this problem again.”
Moving forward, we need adequate land supply and a planning regime that facilitates residential building rather than “acting as a deterrent”.
“A conversation must be had with the community to get people to understand we need more diverse housing options – it is unreasonable for you to expect that on the block next door there will only ever be one dwelling,” he says.
“Both state and local governments must lead that conversation. We need to be preparing ourselves for a growing population, and unfortunately, we’re not doing that.”
When I raise Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner’s push for taller apartment towers, Mr Roberts says that’s only one of a suite of options.
“We talk about affordability in strict dollar terms, which is difficult to control – the way to address affordability is to give people choice so they can weigh up price, location, size of dwelling, proximity to services.
“We need townhouses, duplexes, granny flats, terrace homes but currently planning schemes, particularly in the middle ring suburbs of Brisbane don’t allow for this.”
Getting back to the pressing matter of migration, Mr Roberts says we need to do more than throw open the doors and welcome them.
“One thing we know is that when people come from overseas, they don’t automatically move into a house on a block of land. They often come from something modest, and are prepared to move into something similar.”
Whatever our communities look like in the near future, it is clear that what we see now will not be it.
We have a choice – cleverly plan for positive change or prepare for our collective quality of life to head south.
Kylie lang is associate editor of The Courier-Mail
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