UNIFORM APPROACH TO HOUSING CRISIS

SINGLE mother Andrea Ferris is in the dire situation of being unable to provide a roof over the heads of her three children. The Bulletin has previously reported of other young students getting dressed in cars as their mums and dads are squeezed out of the worst housing crisis on record.

Rents are rising as a 0.4 per cent vacancy rate bites and prospective first-home buyers are being swamped by cashed-up migrants from Sydney and Melbourne chasing an idyllic life in paradise.

No-one can blame them. The bombshell is why it took them so long.

It means house prices and mortgages have skyrocketed as Gold Coasters desperately try to cling on to calling this city home.

In this newspaper today, Mayor Tom Tate has ruled out following Brisbane and hiking rates for properties saved for short-term letting. He says it would “spook” investors and threaten the city’s tourism economy.

Instead, he said the onus was on the state government to provide more social housing, while the council was working to “create the right conditions” for the private sector to build more affordable housing stock.

But that is the problem. The government is not providing the social housing to meet demand – in fact, it is worsening – and everyday families are being denied affordable housing as developers cater for wealthy Mexicans looking to downsize.

It is compounded by the government putting the handbrake on City Plan amendments because it is too hard. All the while, the housing crisis deepens.

The Bulletin has long called for a summit, like it did for The Spit masterplan. The intentions to ease the housing pain are genuine from all parties, but it is too fragmented and too slow.

We need uniformity, and pronto.