More affordable housing projects like this one on Cornwall Street, Woolloongabba, are needed for Queensland.
Demand for affordable housing in Australia is expected to almost double in the next 16 years with the workers whose jobs have been listed as essential during the COVID-19 pandemic among the most at risk.
Brisbane Housing Company chief executive Rebecca Oelkers has told the Committee for Economic Development of Australia that a stimulus package for social and affordable housing, similar to the one that helped Australia recover after the Global Financial Crisis, is needed to stop the number of people looking for affordable housing soaring from its current level of 400,000 to 730,000.
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She said in 2008 the Federal Government spent $5.2 billion on social and affordable housing, which equated to 19,500 new houses and 80,000 home refurbishments.
The construction site in Woolloongabba.
The Community Housing Industry of Australia, of which Ms Oelkers is deputy chair, has put forward a $7.3 billion Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Program, which would lead to 30,000 new affordable housing dwellings being constructed.
She said institutional investors also needed to see affordable housing as a long-term stable project in which to invest superannuation funds, instead of going overseas to potentially fund affordable housing in other countries.
“This is an issue the whole community needs to get behind,” Ms Oelkers said.
“Are we OK with 116,000 homeless people and 400,000 people who can’t put food on the table for their families?
“They are our key workers, assistants in nursing, teacher aides, the cleaners, the coffee makers, the people cleaning our hospitals, there’s so many people doing really good jobs but low paid jobs. They spend 50-70 per cent of their household income each week on rental costs and at the end of the day that’s not sustainable. There’s no money for school books or food.”
In the inner-Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba, Brisbane Housing Company and Stoke Wheeler builders are working on an eight-storey affordable rental complex on Cornwall Street.
“We’re using surplus government land where it was going to be hard to do any other kind of development and we are building 32 units,” she said.
An artist’s impression of the Cornwall Street development at Woolloongabba.
Five of the units are being built in partnership with the Brisbane Youth Service for young people, and the others will be offered to key workers who are struggling to make ends meet.
“The provision of affordable housing is the fabric of Australian society, what kind of society do we actually want to have? At the moment, this gap is not an insurmountable gap.”
The state government announced a
$24.7 million immediate response fund to help with housing support in the wake of COVID-19. A Works for Tradies program is providing 215 social housing units across Queensland, and builders, developers and councils are encouraged to apply for a Building Acceleration Fund for works that will provide long-term employment in the construction industry.
Ms Oelkers welcomed the measures but said the current crisis needed an additional investment.
“The problem is so huge and right now is the time for government to spend and stimulate the economy.”
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