Yet to be released housing issue paper shows shocking statistics continue, provides possible answers

Hervey Bay Neighbourhood Centre will release an updated paper this week on Wide Bay Burnett housing issues: Take an exclusive look inside the paper here.

A strategic housing paper, to be released by a local non for profit organisation later this week, shows shocking homeless statistics across Wide Bay.

The Wide Bay Burnett Strategic Housing Issues Paper by the Hervey Bay Neighbourhood Centre (HBNC), includes a convening of the Fraser Coast Regional Council, housing and homelessness service professionals, Queensland Health and more.

The paper aims “to identify the critical range of issues, limitations and blockages and to suggest any possible solutions” to the ongoing housing crisis in the region.

Inside the paper: Residential Vacancy Rates in Maryborough.

It says there has been a surge of homelessness within six specific cohorts of people:

1. low to middle income individuals and families, who are being exited from tenancies into homelessness;
2. young people;
3. women over 50 years old who are residing in cars, by couch-surfing or, in short-term accommodation due to a lack of affordable rental properties;
4. people sleeping rough, often in conjunction with compounding health and social issues;
5. people requiring transitional housing from prison, and;
6. families under Child Safety orders, who require appropriate accommodation for children to be returned.

It shows the rental market is at “crisis point with less than one per cent vacancy rate” across the region.

“The decrease in rental availability is due to a range of factors; homeowners reclaiming their investment properties to live in themselves; lack of incentives for investors; lack of builders available to build investment properties as most are contracted to work on First Homeowners’ builds; increase in Airbnb properties; developers targeting self-funded retirees to move to the area to live rather than invest; people from southern states moving to Queensland and purchasing properties sight unseen,” the paper says.

“The increase in demand versus stock has resulted in significant rent increases.

“Between January 2020 and January 2021, weekly rents for postcode 4655 increased by 21.9 per cent for three-bedroom houses and 25.2 per cent for two-bedroom units... during this time, rental applications have increased from 20 to 50 per property.”

The paper also includes multiple solutions to the crisis.

This includes three sections – immediate needs for people currently experiencing homelessness, affordable housing models and, ongoing planning and review – with a break down of suggestions within each.

The full paper will be published for the public on HBNC’s website on Friday, July 16, this year.

Homelessness assistance numbers are attached to the paper.