Editorial: Build houses now to end the social turmoil

Queensland is in a social crisis. The massive increase in funding for housing outlined in the budget should have begun years ago, writes the editor.

It is no stretch to describe Queensland’s rental market as a “Hunger Games” style horror.

Quite simply, we don’t have enough homes for the people of this growing state.

Eight months after the state government held its flagship housing summit, the fight to find a roof over your head has gotten harder instead of easier.

Our special report today lifts the lid on the extent of the problem.

The housing crisis has produced a rental market so tight that hundreds of potential tenants are being denied the opportunity to so much as look at a property, let alone secure one.

All this as prices go up and the cost of living bites.

The number of applicants has become so large in some cases that real estate agents are being forced to create their own shortlists, culling numbers and allowing only the select few to take property inspections.

This is creating a disturbing new hierarchy. People of limited means are being relegated to the bottom of that hierarchy, literally not being given a chance to get a foot in the door of a rental house or apartment.

These people, many of whom have good references and proof of their longstanding ability to meet rental payments, are moving into overcrowded caravan parks if they are lucky, our growing tent communities if they are not.

Mother of three Jessica Tracy Taylor, 23, is just one victim of a crisis which appears to be growing in intensity by the week.

Jessica has been living in a caravan park since September 2022, after being homeless for eight months and having applied for more than 800 properties.

Her cramped conditions are costing her $480 per week – a sum which just a couple of years ago would have secured a comfortable three bedroom home in an outlying Brisbane suburb.

And in any case, good luck finding a spot at a caravan park anyway – they are all booked out. The growing sense of impermanence among the new homeless is having a negative psychological impact on ordinary Queenslanders, many of whom have steady jobs and none of the personal issues which in the past have been associated with homelessness.

This crisis is yet to absorb the full impact of returning international students who disappeared during the Covid years.

Simultaneously, the real estate industry is finding landlords are walking away from the market as government-imposed regulations, including the rule that landlords can only raise rents once a year, are having unintended consequences.

They include ordinary home investors bailing out of the market, selling their rental property to a buyer who intends living in it and thereby further reducing our dwindling rental pool.

Perversely, the crackdown on landlords is only harming our most vulnerable – low-income tenants.

This is a crisis which the state government should have seen coming. That massive increase in funding for social housing outlined in the budget should have begun years ago.

The situation demonstrates just how vital developers are to the success of a community.

There is plenty of land still available in this state, even inside the crowded South East.

The indisputable truth is this: we need to start building more houses in this state, immediately.

MUSEUM A VITAL REMINDER OF HORRORS

The European Jewish Holocaust seems inconceivable – an absurd and irrational manifestation of racism and bigotry that could only belong in the annals of ancient history.

Yet it was just 80 years ago, and victims of that 20th-century obscenity are still living and able to bear witness to what was a truly hideous event.

They were guests of honour in central Brisbane yesterday, when the Holocaust Museum was officially opened by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, whose own family has experience with the horrors awakened by National Socialism.

The museum and education centre, which has received $3.5m funding from the state and federal governments as well as Brisbane City Council, is much-needed in a world where anti-Semitism can still raise its ugly head.

Up to 60 per cent of Jewish Queenslanders have reported experiencing some form of anti-Semitism, whether in the workplace on the street or in the schoolyard.

The ignorance in which bigotry so readily flourishes has to be confronted and challenged.

This museum – which honours both the legacy of those who faced terrible atrocities and those who risked their lives saving people from persecution – will become a valuable tool in educating present and future Queenslanders.

Originally published as Editorial: Build houses now to end the social turmoil