Housing crisis:

 While recent years have seen sharply rising rental unaffordability and homelessness in Queensland, these developments only compound more long-running and deep-seated negative housing system trends – notably declining home ownership and the increasingly inadequate capacity of the social housing system.
 A recent burst of rental inflation has seen Queensland private rents growing at rates faster than in any other Australian jurisdiction.

 The sharpest private rent increases have been seen in regional markets where, over the past five years, median rents rose by 80% in Gladstone, by 51% in Noosa, and by 33% in the Gold Coast.
 Compounding problems for low-income Queenslanders, rent inflation at the lower end of the housing market has been greater than in the middle of the market.
 State-wide, the proportion of private tenancies being let at rents affordable to low-income households has halved from 26% to 13% since 2017-18.

 Declining rental affordability for low-income households has been most marked in regional Queensland where this trend has been ongoing since at least 2017-18, with the proportion of lettings affordable to this population cohort falling from 36% to 17% since 2017-18.
 Since the onset of COVID-19, declining rental affordability for low-income households has also affected Greater Brisbane with the proportion of affordable lettings falling from 19% to 10% since 2017-18.

 As measured according to the average monthly caseload of specialist homelessness services (SHS) agencies, homelessness in Queensland rose by 22% in the four years to 2021-22, compared with only 8% across Australia.
 Recently rising homelessness in Queensland has been particularly evident in regional areas, where the average monthly number of SHS service users increased by 29% in the period 2017-18 to 2021-22.

 Overall, there are approximately 150,000 households across Queensland whose needs for affordable housing are currently unmet (that is, they are either homeless (ABS Census definitions) or otherwise low-income recipients living in private rental housing and paying more than 30% of household income in rent). As of the 2021 census, this “backlog need” included 102,000 households who would typically be eligible for social housing.

 Beyond this, on current trends, an additional unmet need for social and affordable housing will equate to 70,000 households over the next 20 years, 54,000 of which will involve social housing-eligible households.
 The scale of currently unmet need for social housing as measured through 2021 Census data (some 102,000 households) dwarfs the number of households officially recognised as such in terms of being registered on the Queensland social housing waiting list (approximately 21,000 on 30 June 2021 – net of applications by existing social renters).

 Following a period of sustained inaction in this sphere, the past two to three years have seen substantial new commitments from both the Queensland and Commonwealth Governments to boost social and affordable housing supply.
 But simply to avoid the current backlog need for social housing growing even larger would require the annual net addition of some 2,700 social rental dwellings to the state’s current stock.

This is more than double the average annual number of social and affordable rental dwellings – 1,300 – expected to be built over the next decade under existing Queensland Government investment commitments.
 While this is beyond its direct competence, the Queensland Government should advocate for the Australian Labor Party to re-adopt its 2016-2019 policy of phasing out private landlord tax concessions – other than, perhaps, for newly built housing.

This study was commissioned by QCOSS on behalf of partner agencies (see Acknowledgements) to develop policy options for tackling Queensland’s identified housing policy challenges; in particular, as these relate to low-income households with limited capability to compete for adequate accommodation in the private market.

More specifically, the project brief specified that the research should investigate:
 scope for enhancing housing policymaking and housing policy governance
 social housing need and possible funding mechanisms for meeting such need
 affordability and security for low-income private tenants
 housing policy settings negatively impacting on broader housing affordability.

The study involved an extensive policy document review and secondary data analysis, as well as semi-structured interviews and meetings with a range of key stakeholders including Queensland Government representatives, independent housing experts, and NGO colleagues.