‘I’ve really struggled’: Housing Minister’s home truth
Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon opens up on grappling with being in charge of fixing the state home supply crisis - and ironically having her own roof leak to fix in her office
Inside Meaghan Scanlon’s Nerang office, there sits an oversized bucket. Squarely placed in the centre of the carpeted floor, it catches a slow but steady trickle of water dripping from a ceiling that yawns with the cavity of missing tiles.
This, ironically, is the electorate home of Queensland’s Minister for Housing. Of course, Ms Scanlon is also the Minister for Public Works, Local Government and Planning. It’s a so-called super-ministry whose weight the 30-year-old has borne, so far, without breaking.
And while that might be more than could be said for her ceiling, the water-damaged roof is perhaps representative of the job Ms Scanlon has ahead of her: battling to keep, or create, a roof over the heads of thousands of struggling Queenslanders, while at the same time reeling from the damage of repeated natural disasters. Indeed while her office roof leak is on the to-do list, the real priority is housing the community and clean-up state wide after recent storm damage
On the eve of the full release of her state government’s Homes for Queenslanders policy, the biggest housing plan of its kind of any government in Australia, Ms Scanlon was clearly determined to make this mission possible.
The State Government has already revealed $390 million in additional funding for homelessness services under the plan, with every specialist homelessness service in the state to receive a 20 per cent increase in funding for the next 18 months.
Expected to be billions of dollars in investment, Ms Scanlon said the housing plan would have five key pillars: to build more homes, faster; to support Queensland renters; help first homeowners into the market; boost social housing and work towards ending homelessness.
The Minister does not take the burden of this responsibility lightly, but said her own background helped prepare her for this challenge.
Born and bred in Nerang, Ms Scanlon was the child of two parents who grew up in Government housing. After the devastating loss of her father to melanoma at the age of 13, she stepped up to help her mother raise her younger brother Callum, who has Down syndrome.
She did so while completing high school at Ashmore’s Aquinas College, which she finished a year early, earning a law degree at Griffith University, then running and winning the state seat of Gaven at age 24, becoming the youngest woman elected to the Queensland parliament.
Continuing the narrative of hardworking over-achiever, Ms Scanlon was awarded her current super-ministry late last year and has been widely tipped as a future leader.
But don’t mistake her for superhuman.
“I really struggled in the first week of this portfolio. The weight of responsibility, knowing how tough it is out there and that there is no silver bullet, that’s hard,” said Ms Scanlon.
“But I’m really trying.” The release of Homes for Queenslanders comes after a report from the Queensland Council of Social Services showed the number of homeless shot up more than 20 per cent since 2017, almost triple the increase nationally.
On the Gold Coast alone, 10 per cent of households were homeless, or living in unaffordable housing.
Ms Scanlon said the new housing plan would fund and support a two-worker model for six after-hours specialist homelessness services, something organisations and unions have been calling for.
She said it also entailed detailed forecasting for social housing needs, something no state had done before.
“We have forecasts for normal housing, planning schemes that say we’re aiming to build this many homes for southeast Queensland. But nobody has ever done that for social housing, we’re doing it
strug“
I really gled in the first week of this portfolio. The weight of responsibility, knowing how tough it is out there and that there is no silver bullet, that’s hard. But I’m really trying.
for the first time,” she said.
“There are also different challenges in different pockets, it’s hard to get access or accommodation for workers in remote areas, whereas on the Gold Coast the challenge is cost and space. It’s complicated, it’s very hard to determine the amount needed because eligibility for social housing is strict and can change.
“The last data released from the social housing register showed while the number of housing applications had essentially stayed the same, the number of families applying had increased. That means the kind of housing we need to provide also has to change.
“But you can’t build what you need without knowing what you need and that’s what we’re doing, and that’s why we’ve worked with AHURI (the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute), an independent body, to help us with this forecast.”
Ms Scanlon said one of the hardest parts of the plan was determining exactly how to provide affordable housing … or even to define what it meant.
While affordable housing has been generally understood to mean accommodation that should cost no more than 30 per cent of a household’s income, that meant the spend differed depending on the region.
Ms Scanlon said ensuring construction was not just affordable but achievable was another challenge.
“Social housing is provided by government, but affordable housing is not necessarily under our control. So how do you ensure that it gets built?
“There is affordable-bydesign, where a developer makes a budget version of their product. It’s not ‘cheap’, it just doesn’t have the bells and whistles so that it costs less to build and to buy.
“But there’s also affordable product where the government can subsidise the product – that’s what we do though the Housing Investment Fund. We work with a community housing provider or developer, and pay the gap to make it affordable for the person.
“Given the supply constraints and labor shortages, we know these builders are operating with a small margin, so we’re dong our best to help.”
Ms Scanlon said while the priority was to build new housing to add supply, she always had her eye on immediate opportunities that could be rapidly transformed into social or emergency housing.
She said the department had scoped out a number of possible properties on the Gold Coast, including the former Earle Haven nursing home, but she said sellers were often looking for more than market value – a problem faced by many potential buyers in the city.
Ms Scanlon said while the scope of the super-ministry was large, it made perfect sense when trying to solve the housing crisis – which required action from both planning and local governments.
She said the aim was to provide affordable housing across regions, not just focused in pockets, and encouraged residents not to be frightened of the d-word: density.
“We have to ensure that affordable housing is still centrally located so that people can access public transportation, amenities and infrastructure … if they’re on the outskirts they’re still paying more, even if the cost of accommodation is less, just in different ways.
“We need a mixture of densities, what we call gentle density. It’s not about high-rises but duplexes and granny flats.
“In Nerang recently we had two blocks that had social housing, one home on each block. We rebuilt that and were able to provide nine social housing units on one side and 11 on the other.
“If you dot that around neighbourhoods, with affordable and social housing, the density doesn’t feel overwhelming and doesn’t need great height.
“The SEQ regional plan is somewhat changing the landscape. It was a protracted process with (former City of Gold Coast planning chair, now LNP Member for Fadden) Cameron Caldwell, but new planning chair (Division 1 Councillor) Mark Hammel is taking a different approach.
“The plan targets require a mix of density and different dwelling types for each region, and 20 per cent of that needs to be social and affordable housing. By working on all these areas of the ‘superministry’, we have been taking steps forward.”
But in the midst of this planning and progress, came the storms. In fact, Ms Scanlon was officially sworn in to her new portfolios the day after Cyclone Jasper crossed the Queensland coast.
Just one week later, the Gold Coast was rocked by a Christmas Day storm with cyclone intensity.
“It was pretty unhelpful having natural disasters in the middle of this,” sighed Ms Scanlon. “We’re frantically trying to rebuild whole communities up north, and that’s not boosting our housing supply but just replacing what was already there.
“We’re trying to add and nature is trying to subtract.
“But I think we have to remind ourselves that as climate change continues, these events are going to become more common. That’s a mindset that those in the north already live with, but those of us in SEQ need to start preparing ourselves, physically and emotionally.”
When the Christmas Day storms hit the city, Ms Scanlon cancelled her holiday leave and opened up her office – leaking roof and all.
She said she was incredibly proud of her community and their resilience in the face of days and days without power but with intense heat.
“I just really love this community. No one complained, they came in here because it was airconditioned and they could charge their phones. They were hoping to have power back soon, but they knew everyone was doing the best they could.
“I grew up around the corner from here, these are my people and I am so proud to be their representative, because to me they represent the best of the human spirit.
“I wouldn’t say I have much in the way of spare time, but this job is so interesting and so different every day, it never feels like work. This is what I want to do.”
Just like that oversized tub, her bucket is full.