Toowoomba CBD social housing project in Snell Street by Salvation Army launches

A major charity has unveiled its $17m social housing project in Toowoomba's CBD, offering 23 units and wraparound services for vulnerable residents.

Darren Booth and his parents haven’t just moved into a new social housing unit — they’ve found a home that can help them stay together as a family for as long as possible.

“I hope to be in Snell St for the near future with mum and dad and live happy,” the social housing resident declared while standing his new rental in the CBD built by the Salvation Army.

Mr Booth and his folks are among the dozens of tenants now living inside the Salvos’ $17m social and community housing project near the heart of Toowoomba, which enjoyed its public launch this week.

Resident Darren Booth as The Salvation Army open their 23-unit social housing project on Snell Street in Toowoomba City, Tuesday, September 9, 2025. Picture: Kevin Farmer

The landmark development behind Betros Bros, funded equally by the charity and the Queensland government, includes 23 one and two-bedroom units fully occupied by people who were either on the social housing waitlist or in unsuitable existing public dwellings.

The opening on Tuesday comes about 12 months after McNab Construction started work on the project, and more than five years since the Salvos conceived of converting its old op shop and warehouse into low-cost CBD living.

Salvation Army state housing manager Cheri Erai-Collins said tenants would get access to a range of wraparound services, with the five-storey structure featuring numerous community spaces for events and get-togethers among residents.

“We have our financial counselling service, we have our doorway service, we also have our special homelessness services as well that are going to come in here (but) one of the things that we’re really keen to do is understand what the tenants actually want,” she said.

The Salvation Army open their 23-unit social housing project on Snell Street in Toowoomba City, Tuesday, September 9, 2025. Picture: Kevin Farmer

“One of the first things we’re going to do is hold an event with the tenants and ask them if there are specific programs that they’d like us to run.

“On our first floor as well, we have a community space for tenants solely, so the public can’t come in — we’ve only had tenants in here for about four weeks, and we’ve actually seen a lot of use of that space.

“All of our (future and upcoming) developments will have a version of this community care space embedded into the projects.”

Ms Erai-Collins said Snell St had also unlocked other housing across Toowoomba, since about a third of the tenants had previously been in social dwellings deemed too large for their needs.

“When we first started the conversations with the local housing service centre, they flagged that there was a big need for downsizing in the region, so they asked us if we would be willing to look at that as an opportunity for the facility here,” she said.

“If we had had a little bit more time, we could have found more people willing to downsize, but there’s such a big need that we just housed as many people as quickly as we could.”

Housing Minister Sam O'Connor speaking at the opening of The Salvation Army's 23-unit social housing project on Snell Street in Toowoomba City, Tuesday, September 9, 2025. Picture: Kevin Farmer

Housing Minister Sam O’Connor, who opened the project, said state government data showed downsizing single tenants and couples into smaller homes could create opportunities to free up existing housing for families living in motels and crisis centres.

“On the data that we did have, we had around 8000 tenancies that were not suiting (residents’) needs, that were too large for their needs,” he said.

“We don’t want to go down the path of forcing people to downsize – we want to make it a carrot, not a stick, approach and we want to make sure that there are incentives in place.

“The biggest incentive is the beautiful new homes that we have here today.”

Snell St was approved by the previous state government through the ministerial infrastructure designation (MID) process, something Mr O’Connor said the LNP was keen to expand on with a revamped procurement process for social housing.

“We’re very supportive, and that’s why one of the first things we did in this space was to have an enhanced process for community housing and faith-based organisations – to make sure that community housing being built on church and charity land had a clear pathway,” he said.

“The announcement last week around Q-CHIP, which is the clear pipeline that we are now putting in place, is in fact a nation-leading pipeline – there’s no other jurisdiction in the nation that has an always-open procurement process for community housing.

“There was an average of just 509 new social homes delivered every year under the former government (and) our objective in this term is to get that to over 2000 homes delivered a year.”