It’s going to become even harder to find any sort of housing in Gympie.
The State Government’s new idea is to compete against private renters when there is next to
nothing available.
The “Help to Home” initiative is simply poaching private rental properties to house social
housing tenants.
In effect it is shifting the problem to the private rental marketplace.
This will just make things worse for Gympie people trying to put a roof over their heads.
More people will be competing for a smaller pool of available housing.
Last week the REIQ said that the Gympie’s vacancy rate for private rentals for the December
quarter was sitting at only 0.3%. *
And the pressure shows no sign of easing.
Anecdotally it is not good.
The Minister is failing social housing applicants.
For years I‘ve continually raised issues about the level of social housing which is available in
Gympie.
I regularly make representations and when I write there is no decent response.
The Minister is out of her depth and responses to any questions are either pathetic or no
response at all.
The answer is to go to a website or an empty PR statement.
My office receives calls from distressed residents trying to find crisis accommodation where
the number of properties has shrunk in past years.
In October 2019 there were 308 government owned and managed properties in the Gympie
electorate and by February last year it has reduced to 296 social housing properties. **
At the same time in October 2019 there were 185 applications for social housing.
Following representations and reports from charitable and not-for-profit groups last year I
asked the Minister in December how many people had been identified as homeless or facing
homelessness.
I also asked when the Government would increase the stock of houses available for social
housing.
The response was to go to a website and a PR statement that “the department takes a personcentred approach to providing housing support” with nothing about what is going on in
Gympie.***
This latest initiative shows the Minister is out of her depth which is leading to a dismal and
catastrophic failure to provide housing for the vulnerable.
*https://www.couriermail.com.au/property/qld-tenants-begging-sellers-to-rent-insteadas-housing-crisis-worsens/news-story/a780909260fc8309ba813cbe188a2ae5
**Question on Notice 1559 (2019) and 293 (2021)
***Question on Notice 1615 (2021)