Council votes on housing and homelessness action plan

Tensions were high as members of the public were shut down while questioning and heckling the Sunshine Coast Council over its housing crisis plan. Watch the video.

Tensions were high as angry residents packed the gallery at Sunshine Coast Council’s meeting to make their voices heard on a housing and homelessness action plan.

There was applause, heckling and laughter at some of the proposals and statements put forward by council, with the mayor having to tell the crowd they had no time to answer their questions.

With a 54 per cent increase in homelessness and a one per cent rental vacancy rate, the council said these extreme circumstances had led them to take action in an area that was normally out of their scope.

Issues with material supplies, labour shortages, building company collapses, ongoing effects of Covid-19 and a lack of action on social housing were all blamed for the crisis.

Mayor Mark Jamieson explained to members of the public that the council does not accept questions during general meetings.

Mayor Mark Jamieson said one of the plan’s initiatives was to identify vacant council land that could be developed for social housing.

“But we have got to be careful with those situations that council isn’t seen to be taking advantage of that situation and not providing the same opportunities to the private sector,” he said.

Other initiatives in the plan include advocacy and evidence-based policy.

The plan is a step forward but councillor David Law asked what it would actually do to address the issue.

“If I speak for a homeless person who might be looking at this report and this plan we’ve put together, what’s changed?,” he said.

“What difference will there be for me tomorrow?”

His question was met with applause from the gallery.

Community group convener Camillo Primavera is creating his own homelessness registry to help council. Picture: Chelsea Heaney

Community group convener Camillo Primavera stood up and tried to ask a question, but was told the council did not allow questions during meeting.

Mr Jamieson told the crowd to instead engage with their division’s councillor outside of the meeting.

“Our community, we’re concerned about things going on in all our government levels,” Mr Primavera said after the meeting.

Mr Primavera started a homelessness register for the Sunshine Coast so that services can be directed to them.

“At the moment, we have about 3000 homeless people that are sleeping in backyards, or sleeping in cars or being housed by charity groups,” he said.

“A lot of these places and people are too scared to come to council because of the council’s town planning restrictions.”

Sunshine Coast residents filled the room as the council discussed homelessness and housing. Picture: Chelsea Heaney

Mr Jamieson said the community was desperate to see solutions.

“But a lot of them want us to do something as long as we don’t put it anywhere near them, and that’s a problem in itself,” he said.

Councillor Ted Hungerford said council was limited in what it could do and state and federal governments needed to “step up”.

“The scope of delivering for this problem is way beyond us even if we had the desire and wanted to,” he said.

Councillor Rick Baberowski said there was a dramatic shortfall between the state average of 4.2 per cent social housing and the Sunshine Coast’s rate of two per cent.

“Why didn’t this dramatic shortfall become apparent until now?,” he said.

“How did we get here?”

In response, Mr Jamieson said “it was probably a lot to do with politics”.

“There are representatives of state and federal governments of the Sunshine Coast who need to share some more of that burden because they are in a position to make a real difference,” he said.

The vote to accept the action plan was voted through unanimously.

Queensland Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon refuted council’s claims on social housing and said the state government had committed a record $5bn towards social and affordable homes.

“We’ve continued to deliver housing on the Sunshine Coast since 2015, with more than 3,600 social homes now on the coast after the LNP failed to deliver a single new home in their last year of government,” she said.

“What’s clear is all levels of government need to pull every lever to help tackle the impact national housing pressures are having in Queensland.

“There have been examples of councils next to the Sunshine Coast waiving infrastructure charges for social and affordable housing developments, which I’ve welcomed.”