The Queensland suburbs where affordable rents are set to disappear

Affordable housing will be axed across Queensland as the National Rental Affordability Scheme draws closer to its end. Find out which suburbs will lose out first.

Newly released data has identified the Queensland suburbs that will have affordable housing axed as the National Rental Affordability Scheme (NRAS) draws closer to an end.

The scheme, which began in 2008, gives incentive to landlords to provide affordable housing at least 20 per cent below market rates.

But Queensland will lose more affordable housing this year compared to anywhere else in the nation with more than 2200 houses, apartments, units and townhouses in the state to be removed this year.

The landlords of these homes exiting the scheme will then be free to charge market rates or to sell their properties.

Over four years, a total of 8220 homes will be cut – comprising 2273 in 2022, 2499 in 2023, 2845 in 2024 and 603 in 2025.

From 2022-2026, Queensland will also have lost the most affordable housing compared to its other interstate counterparts.

Housing experts fear some landlords will present tenants with the option of either paying at least 20 per cent more than their existing rent or face eviction when subsidies end.

Many of the properties also are being sold as the subsidies are cut off, removing them from the rental market.

This was adding further pressure on a housing market already unable to meet demand for rental properties, especially for low to medium income earners.

Queensland Shelter executive director Fiona Caniglia says the federal and state governments need to work together to provide affordable housing by extending the NRAS as well as by adopting more subsidies at a state level.

“It’s critical that we’re working at a state and federal level for a net gain in social and affordable housing. The exit from NRAS leaves us with an option where it will be a net loss and there’s nothing really to replace it,” she said.

“We’re really calling for two things … One is to sustain NRAS and the second is to invest in new and innovative affordable housing models for the future.”

Newly released data identifies the Queensland suburbs set to have affordable housing axed as the National Rental Affordability Scheme draws closer to an end. Picture: Supplied

Ms Caniglia said if the NRAS was not renewed, some people residing in the existing subsidised properties would ‘slide into crisis’.

“What will happen is some of the households living in NRAS properties will slide into crisis, all they will have available to them is present to the crisis homelessness system and hope they can be assisted,” she said.

“The demand on specialist homelessness services crisis services is unprecedented and what often happens is that you think the answer is to invest more in crisis response whereas what we’re saying is that make sure upstream the housing is sustained so that people don’t have to experience a crisis.”