Cannonvale, Whitsundays score 12 new social housing units, but waitlist grows

A project to build 12 new state-of-the-art social housing units in small North Queensland seaside town is weeks away from completion. Meanwhile, some residents have been waiting for more than eight years.

The project to build 12-new social units for the Whitsundays is nearing completion, with its contractor promising people would be moving in by the end of April.

The Queensland state government had announced a $5.5 million project to build social housing in Cannonvale in August last year, as part of the state’s Big Build project, that contains a $1.25 billion budget allocated to build 53,500 new social homes in Queensland by 2046.

In the Whitsunday council area, 228 people are waiting for social housing across 148 different applications, as of December 2023, with the longest waiting time being over eight years to date.

Of these Whitsunday people on waiting lists, there were 28 single parents, 106 single persons, with the rest were couples or families.

Six months earlier, 213 people were on the waiting list in the Whitsundays Regional Council area, meaning the new housing will remain a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed to reverse the trend.

Mackay based construction company Fergus Builders was hired by the state government to complete 12 social housing units for Cannonvale. Picture: Contributed

Mackay-based construction company Fergus Builders was contracted by the state government to build two seperate two-storey buildings, located next to Bicentennial Park in Cannonvale.

A Department of Housing spokeswoman said the first residents would be single adults and couples.

The ground level would include four one-bedroom homes designed to Gold Level accessibility standards, as well as two one-bedroom homes designed to Platinum Level accessibility that have additional clearance and circulation spaces.

12 new social housing units have just been completed for Cannonvale. Picture: Contributed

Units include features such as level thresholds, wider doorways, hallways and clearances, and features such as wall ovens and bench tops placed at lower levels to cater for people who mobilise in wheelchairs.

Fergus Builders Director Adam Wright said the works, that had been completed within deadline, had required over a 100 trades for more than 2500 trading hours for apprentices and new trade entrants.

12 new social housing units have just been completed for Cannonvale. Picture: Contributed

“It was obviously a lot of local trades, we are a local company ourselves,” Mr Wright said.

“Everything was run smoothly, we’re just waiting for the final connection works to happen and hopefully within the next two to three weeks, it’ll be handed over and people will be moving in.”

Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon said the completion of these housing units showed the state’s commitment to bringing more housing to the community, although

recent figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on the number of new builds completed show a fall of about six per cent of number of builds completed between 2022 and 2023.