Danger zone in rental stress

At risk of homelessness

THE number of Queenslanders now in the homeless danger zone is about double the population of Cairns, as soaring rental prices leave at least 150,000 households in critical housing stress.

And there is no end in sight, with the state government’s planned delivery of public housing needing to increase tenfold to keep up with demand.

Queensland’s desperate rate of homelessness has been laid bare in a new landmark report, which reveals there are about 300,000 Queenslanders experiencing housing insecurity, as soaring rental prices disproportionately affect lowerincome families and inadequate supply of social housing leaves many languishing.

The Blueprint to Tackle Queensland’s Housing Crisis report, commissioned by the Queensland Council of Social Service, also reveals the rate of homelessness in Queensland surged by 22 per cent since 2017 – far exceeding the national rise in homelessness of eight per cent.

According to the report, there are 150,000 households with unmet housing needs, which the social services peak body says equates to about 300,000 people who are either homeless or paying more than 30 per cent of their incomes on rent.

“We had said that there was a population the size of Gympie on our social housing register,” QCOSS chief executive Aimee McVeigh said.

“We can now see from this report there’s around 300,000 Queenslanders currently experiencing housing insecurity.

“And to put that into perspective, that’s about double the population of Cairns.”

Areas to the south of Brisbane were struggling most, with one in 10 Logan, Beaudesert and Gold Coast households categorised as homeless or living in housing that is not affordable.

But the daunting scale of the crisis was eclipsed by the inadequacy of the response from government, according to Ms McVeigh, who said the lack of public housing supply in the pipeline was the most alarming concern.

The research, led by widely respected UNSW housing academic Hal Pawson, forecasts another 70,000 Queensland households will experience an unmet need for affordable housing over the next 20 years, with 54,000 of those likely to be in need of social housing.

The Palaszczuk government would need to double its construction commitment of social housing to 2700 homes a year to keep up with current demand, but the report says a staggering 11,000 public dwellings are needed each year to clear the backlog as well as prepare for the dire projections.

“We know that if we continue to respond to the crisis in the way that we are, we are going to see things get worse,” Ms McVeigh said.

“The report finds that, even just to maintain the status quo, we’d need to double the number of houses currently in the pipeline and we know that actually much more than that is required.”

Ms McVeigh said the “staggering number” of 11,000 social homes needed each year meant more investment was required from both the state and federal governments, while alternative policy options needed to be more seriously considered.

“It shows we do need to quickly look at models like build to rent and make sure that we have large amounts of housing coming on that includes social and affordable housing in those developments,” she said.

“We need more money into the housing investment funds, and we need to better regulate the private rental market.”

The federal government’s housing plan is to build about 40,000 new social and affordable homes across the country while the state government committed an extra $1bn to its housing investment fund at last year’s Housing Summit.

But Ms McVeigh said the current promises were “just a drop in the ocean”.

“We‘ve got 46,000 people on our social housing register and growing, and hundreds of thousands more Queenslanders who could be eligible for social housing or might become eligible for social housing,” she said.