Qld housing crisis ‘particularly acute’ in regional areas

Children and teenagers are grappling with homelessness in record numbers as median rents soar up to 80 per cent in five years.

Children and teenagers living outside city centres are grappling with homelessness in record numbers, as median rents in regional Queensland soared by up to 25 per cent in one year and 80 per cent over five years.

Housing and homelessness advocates have issued a stark warning that the crisis forcing hundreds of thousands of Queenslanders into housing stress is more acute in the regions, where there is insufficient housing stock for people moving outside metropolitan areas for work.

Some areas in Queensland recorded rental growth of up to 80 per cent between 2017 and 2022, while the homelessness rate in regional parts of the state has risen almost 30 per cent in four years.

Queensland Council of Social Service chief executive Aimee McVeigh stressed the statewide crisis was “particularly acute” in the regions, where some families were paying up to $100 more for rent per week than at the same time last year.

She said homeless rates in regional Queensland had soared nearly 30 per cent in the past four years, significantly outstripping the national average of 8 per cent.

“We know that the housing crisis has been decades in the making – it is the result of inaction by successive governments over long periods of time and then exacerbated by state migration as a result of Covid,” Ms McVeigh said.

“There’s particular areas of regional Queensland where there just isn’t sufficient housing and people have moved there for jobs and rent has increased.

“Places like Gladstone, (which) has seen a 80 per cent median increase in rent across the last five years.”

The latest shock data from the Residential Tenancies Authority revealed median rents rose 25 per cent further in the 12 months to June in the Douglas, Somerset and Maranoa Local Government Areas, compared to 17 per cent in Brisbane.

Anglicare Central Queensland chief executive Carol Godwin

The crunch is leading to a disturbing surge in the number of those aged 19 or younger who have required the assistance of homelessness service providers. Of the number of people presenting to specialist homelessness services in the Western Downs and South Burnett in 2022, 64 and 59 per cent respectively were under 19 – an increase in both areas on the year before of 5 per cent and 3 per cent.

In Gladstone, there were nearly 300 children presenting for help – 55 per cent of the total number for the year.

Anglicare Central Queensland chief executive Carol Godwin said the crisis was laid bare in her region, where people have been forced to sleep in their cars or on the benches outside shopping centres.

She said a man who is forced to sleep in his work ute in Rockhampton was indicative of the desperate situation – working young people who can’t find a home.

“You’re not only seeing people on allowances, you’re seeing working people not able to secure homes because the availability is not there,” Ms Godwin said.

“It’s an availability and an affordability issue, which is causing a perfect storm here.”

Ms Godwin has worked in the sector for three decades and she said the current crisis is the worst she has ever experienced.

But she warned conditions will only further compound given the state government’s inability to sufficiently increase the number of social and affordable homes in recent years.

“In the last two years, we know we’ve been in the middle of a housing crisis, but the number of new builds in social housing has actually been the lowest over the last six years,” Ms Godwin said.

“So in each of the last two financial years over the past six, we have had the fewest constructions with less than 500 new social housing properties built in Queensland.”