Housing crisis: Regional employers building homes to secure workers
A critical lack of regional housing in Victoria is sending employers to great lengths to secure homes for their workers. See how they’re battling the odds.
A crisis in regional housing is sending employers to great lengths to secure homes for their workers.
From the Victorian grainbelt to the state’s coastal south west, and the horticultural heartlands of Sunraysia and the Goulburn Valley, employers say there is next to nowhere for incoming workers, or locals, to stay.
The crisis is pushing employers to buy, build and rent accommodation for their workers, and leaving those who can’t afford the expense short-staffed.
The problem is so big, Infrastructure Australia last year identified the “availability, diversity and affordability” of housing as the primary infrastructure gap in regional Australia, pointing out that a lack of appropriate housing can hinder economic growth, exacerbate social issues and damage health and wellbeing.
By 2051, regional Victoria will need to find homes for an extra 600,000 people, according to Infrastructure Australia estimates. With the average family living 2.5 people to a home, about 9000 new houses will need to be built each year to keep up with demand.
A major research paper published last year by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute called for an “urgent … co-ordinated national, state and territory, and local government response to secure rental housing for current and future tenants.”
But as political parties debate the answers to the crisis, regional employers are getting started with solutions.
John and Craig Henderson: Broadacre cropping
At the peak of their harvest season, Craig Henderson and his nephew John manage a workforce of about 15 people on their Mallee and Millewa broadacre cropping properties.
But finding places for the workers to live has been a challenge.
“We’re seeing companies in regional towns buying up houses to shore up staff positions. It’s bloody hard to get a house for people to move into,” Craig says.
As the region’s traditional housing stock of post-war weatherboard farmhouses ages, Craig says there is a “declining base number of houses”, as the cost of renovating the homes to a liveable state rises beyond what is deemed affordable.
In the past, the Hendersons’ farming business has relied on local pubs and caravan parks to house workers during its peak season, but with availability increasingly tight, they have decided to invest in on-farm worker accommodation.
The first home, on their Merrinee property, housed four workers last season, and John says they are looking into options for their next investment.
Greg “Wally” Wallace: Transportable units
Demand for accommodation in regional areas has led to a boom in demand for homes and long waiting lists.
Wallace Transportable Units owner Greg “Wally” Wallace said his construction business at Lascelles in the Victorian Mallee had grown from being an idea eight years ago to being one of the biggest employers in the small town with a staff of 10 people.
He is now booked out 12 months in advance as he works to now builds 50 one to three bedroom units a year.
His main limitation is access to materials: “You can only do so much with the amount of materials and you can get,” he says.
Jonathan Chislett: Citrus
Kenley citrus, avocado and pistachio grower Jonathan Chislett says limited housing meant he had few options when looking to increase the number of workers he employed through the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme.
“We’re quite a distance from the nearest towns and places where there is accommodation, so (building) is what made sense for us,” Mr Chislett says.
Chislett farms is nestled on an isolated bend of the Murray River, 45 minutes from the town of Robinvale, where there are next to no houses available to rent.
The rental vacancy rate in Robinvale was 0.0 per cent in June, and has not inched above 0.2 per cent since 2016, according to property data company SQM research.
Building accommodation brought challenges, and tight regulations around the standard of housing meant higher costs than Mr Chislett had expected or budgeted for.
Two years ago he had just installed an accommodation block he thought was large enough to house 60 workers, when he was told the size of the rooms he had ordered were too small, by a matter of centimetres, to meet the minimum size required to house two workers each.
In order to accommodate the workers he had arriving, he had to put in an order at short notice for four more prefabricated units.
“It was an extra $400,000 that we didn’t think we needed to spend,” he says.
But in the end, there was no replacement for a hardworking, reliable workforce, and having the workers close by when the fruit is ready to pick each day means less time wasted, he says.
Red Rich Fruits: Horticulture
Red Rich Fruits director Matthew Palise says the shortage of housing in regional Australia is the biggest limitation he faces to expanding his business.
Red Rich Fruits grows apples, cherries and stone fruit in Victoria’s Yarra Valley, citrus in Queensland’s Gayndah region, and mangoes in the Northern Territory.
Since the pandemic, Mr Palise says local workers have become increasingly hard to find, so he has turned to the PALM program to supply a staff of up to 60 people, who he plans to rotate through his farms around the country.
But with PALM workers comes a need for housing, often in regional areas with rental vacancy rates close to zero.
“There’s a chronic (housing) shortage across rural areas and regional areas. There is nothing left to lease, and so your only option is to build,” Mr Palise says.
Red Rich Fruits has started work on an accommodation block at the business’ Yarra Valley site for 60 workers, which is expected to be completed in two years.
Mr Palise would like to replicate the Yarra Valley build on his farms in Gayndah and Darwin to bring down the amount he is spending to rent four houses, a backpacker hostel and cabins in a caravan park.
“We could quite easily double our production in Gayndah. But we’re already right to the wire with getting enough workers on site as it is, and we’re limited to the accommodation (we have). So we physically can’t have any more people,” he says.
But he estimates the cost of building accommodation for 60 workers at Gayndah and 36 in Darwin would be between $1 million and $2.5 million — something he says his business can’t afford.
He is calling on the government to help.
“Australian fresh produce farmers are growing the food for the country. And at the moment, under the current restrictions farmers are under, it’s getting increasingly harder to do that. The margins are evaporating overnight. So if we want a viable sustainable farming industry, there needs to be a mechanism to either help private businesses build the accommodation, or the government can do it and get the financial upside. But there needs to be assistance in regional areas,” he says.
Victorian government considering more housing investment
A Victorian Government spokesperson said in a statement the government was “working hard on a housing package and will have more to say in due course”.
The Victorian government has committed $1 billion to a Regional Housing Fund, which plans to deliver “more than 1300 homes across regional Victoria”, the spokesperson said.
“We’re also investing $150 million towards the Regional Worker Accommodation Fund to support regions where key workers are struggling to find affordable places to live – giving regional communities even more new housing options.”
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