Queensland is considering following international precedents and introducing minimum requirements for affordable housing in new developments.
The idea was floated at a roundtable hosted by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk on Friday, as the state prepares for a housing summit next month.
“In the UK, 25 per cent … has to be for affordable or social housing in a new development,” Ms Palaszczuk said on Friday,
“That’s a great idea … we want to explore that further.”
Better use of existing vacant properties and land is also on the table as the state tries to address what has been described as a housing affordability crisis.
“I really want to thank Griffith University that has identified a property straight away that we can utilise … 200 beds of unused student accommodation at (their) Mt Gravatt campus,” Ms Palaszczuk said.
The state government will work with service providers to refurbish the rooms and make them available for those in crisis.
The Catholic Church has identified 90 properties that could be used across the state, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said.
Ms Palaszczuk is now calling on other organisations with vacant assets to do the same.
“We recognise that these are very complex issues, but there have been excellent conversations today,” she said.
People at risk of displacement generally want to stay in their communities, and the government will work with service providers to enable them to do so, Ms Palaszczuk said.
The Queensland Council of Social Service said while the roundtable was an important step, at least 5000 new social housing dwellings need to be built every year for the next decade to solve the crisis.
“Right now, we have about 50,000 people waiting on the social housing register and a growing number of Queenslanders presenting to community services desperately needing help with housing,” CEO Aimee McVeigh said.
“Tents are being handed out to families, women and children are returning to domestic violence situations, and women and men in their 60s and 70s are sleeping on couches and floors, because there is nowhere else to go.”
Katter’s Australian Party has put forward its own plan to address housing demand in the state’s southeast while boosting regional populations.
For a period of two years, owner-occupier house and land purchases in regional Queensland towns with a population of less than 25,000 would only attract half the normal transfer duty fees, leader Robbie Katter said on Friday.
Regional towns have “houses sitting empty and jobs going begging”, Mr Katter said, describing surging demand in the southeast as “not good for the residents of Brisbane or the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and certainly not good for us in the regions”.
LNP treasury spokesman David Janetzki said the ideas floated during the roundtable meeting were “short-term solutions” warning more work had to be done.
“We’re going to need far more to meet the 50,000 people that are on the social housing waitlist,” Mr Janetzski said.
“We’re going to need more to build investment and confidence back into the Queensland property market so that we can increase supply, we can get more blocks available, we can get more investment into rental properties.”
Queensland’s Housing Summit will take place on October 20.
© AAP 2022
