Housing crisis prompts shake-up of tenants

EMPTY-NESTERS and others with rooms to spare will be moved to downsized accommodation to wring more value out of public housing.

EMPTY-NESTERS and others with rooms to spare will be moved to downsized accommodation under measures to wring more value out of public housing.

 Queensland Housing Minister Bruce Flegg revealed yesterday that a government audit had identified 8700 public housing properties with two or more bedrooms unoccupied - about 15 per cent of the state's total stock.

In many cases, elderly people had stayed on in the housing commission home in which they raised their children, even though they no longer needed the extra space.

When extrapolated, the Queensland data suggests that more than 40,000 public housing lots are under-occupied around the nation.

"Under-occupancy is the biggest single one of the many challenges we are facing with public housing," Dr Flegg told The Australian.

"The finances are unsustainable. Rents are declining dramatically because of under-occupancy ... so if you have got one person in a three-bedroom house, they can be paying $90 a week for a house that will rent in the market for $400 a week."

The problem is nationwide, despite the injection of $5.6 billion into social housing by the federal government under post-GFC economic stimulus programs to fund construction of 19,700 homes and residential units.

Victoria last night backed Dr Flegg's grim assessment, with a spokeswoman for Premier Ted Baillieu saying the state's Auditor-General had reported in March that public housing was not "sustainable in its current form".

NSW Family and Community Services Minister Pru Goward said occupancy rates were being reviewed, while Housing SA offered voluntary transfers when it came across tenants with unused bedrooms.

In what he described as a "Queensland solution", Dr Flegg is exploring equity swaps with community housing groups to allow people to move.

A "catalyst model" devised by the not-for-profit Brisbane Housing Company, which already owns and manages 1200 units for low-income tenants, would use vacant land or housing commission houses put up by the government as collateral to fund downsized accommodation.

BHC would then service the debt by redeveloping the original public housing lots.

"This whole situation is very rigid," BHC chief executive David Cant said.

"Something needs to give so that people will move in the first place ... you need to manage these projects very sensitively, but I think it can be done."

Dr Flegg said he had already identified all vacant land held by state housing, and other Queensland government departments were auditing their residential land stocks.

If tenants did not want to move from under-occupied public housing, they could be given the option of taking in someone on the waiting list.

In Queensland, this had blown out to 30,000 families, a third of which were classed as "technically homeless ... so they are staying with friends and relatives, couch surfing, moving from house to house as good people take them", Dr Flegg said.

Adrian Pisarski, chairman of advocacy group National Shelter, said the Queensland government was entitled to "take a tough stance", provided it was fair.

Dr Flegg also flagged a crackdown on public housing tenants avoiding rent by not declaring others living with them.