Premier’s housing move applauded but more needed for housing crisis

Do not believe it for one second when the Premier today stands up to claim she has allocated an extra $1bn to build more social housing across the state, writes the editor. She has not.

Do not believe it for one second when the Premier today stands up to claim she has allocated an extra $1bn to build more social housing across the state.

She has not. Instead, in what is still a worthy and meaningful decision, her government is to double the money set aside in its Housing Investment Fund to pay for the construction of social housing. That extra $1bn investment will, of course, double the annual returns from the fund – meaning that an extra $65m a year can be spent on social housing.

We welcome this decision, and congratulate the Premier and her Cabinet on making such a solid announcement on the morning of its Housing Summit, which the government convened as a direct response to The Courier-Mail’s Hitting Home series last month.

The government has come under pressure to build more social housing after the Auditor-General warned earlier this year that the current plan would not deliver enough homes to keep up with demand. And so this is clearly an important step that should be applauded by all.

But social housing is only one piece of the puzzle here. While the extra funding means construction will start on an extra 5500 social housing homes by 2027 (on top of the 6365 the government had promised by 2025), that is only scratching the surface of this crisis.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. NewsWire / Sarah Marshall

The government housing stock is only 3 per cent of the state’s total, meaning that the direct levers it can pull will only ever do so much.

There is another pertinent point here, too, and that is that the social housing element is only one part of this crisis. This is a crisis because for the first time people in many of our state’s cities who have a job cannot find or afford a place to live. That, in turn, puts additional pressure on the social housing queue. But these are people who should not be in that queue in the first place.

This crisis is being fuelled by a combination of record low vacancy rates, higher property prices and interest rates making purchasing harder for more people, and massive increases in rental prices.

We do not pretend to be experts in what the government can do to help the private sector make things right. That is what today’s summit is about. But we urge those from the government who attend to park their politics and listen carefully.

Already the government has moved to make some changes. Deputy Premier Steven Miles said he would make legal the renting of granny flats, and has moved to take control of at least one council that he says has failed to properly plan the release of land for development. Mr Miles has also launched a formal investigation into what impact the short-term rental market – Airbnb, Stayz and the like – are having on supply in the long-term rental market. These are good initial steps, and Mr Miles has done a great job of leading the way on the government’s response so far.

The Premier also made the right call in standing up to her Treasurer, Cameron Dick, and dumping plans to tax Queensland landlords who also own properties interstate on those houses or apartments, too. While Mr Dick is still backing the idea, the reality – as now accepted by all of his colleagues – is that it was just plain stupid in the current market to risk a new tax that could not only have pushed up rents but also dampened investor sentiment.

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