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The HSEP was established in 2018 with a focus on the south-east corner and expanded at the end of 2022 as part of the Queensland Government’s response to unlock more housing, with a range of actions underway.

The new panel provides independent, expert advice to government on housing issues throughout the entire state.

Here is what seven members of the panel had to say on the issue.

Julie Saunders – urban planning and housing (Chair)

Queensland is going through a transformation. Our unique lifestyle and diverse state are resulting in record numbers of migration. As an Olympic and Paralympic state, this will be set to continue over the next 10 years.

With this context, some of the key challenges are:

• Protecting our unique lifestyle and liveability while growing our population.
• Generating more volume across a more diverse range of housing types – getting the market to engage in this.
• Educating our community on the benefits of providing a range of housing types in the right locations – a healthy housing system.
• Reducing red tape to get efficient delivery of all housing types.
• Maximising the use of our existing infrastructure to support diverse housing opportunities.
• Supporting delivery of housing into the regional and remote communities where this is challenging.
• Ensuring our housing is resilient to natural disasters.
• What is the Brisbane 2032 housing legacy? We need to ensure we have a positive housing legacy from the Olympic and Paralympic Games.

Amy Degenhart – urban design and architecture

The biggest challenges to housing supply, affordability, and diversity are tradition, planning, design, and finance.

Traditionally, industry and consumer behaviour reinforce an expectation of larger homes within suburban neighbourhoods, despite this mindset frustrating the joy of a walkable community, separating families, isolating facilities, and increasing costs.

Yet this tradition of large lots offers our greatest opportunity, with good design being the key to unlocking the value of renewing homes – one by one – within established neighbourhoods, replacing one dwelling with three. This strategy is sustainable (repurposing city infrastructure, building carbon-friendly, and minimising transport demands), healthy (facilitating walkability and aging-in-place), accessible (physically and financially), and would enhance social capital by bringing neighbours closer together.

Clever planning could ensure setbacks, site cover, and streetscape remain consistent while “paper density” increases threefold, distributing the bedrooms of one dwelling into three. Architecture and design are the key to unlocking these values, providing the confidence needed to conquer tradition and welcome a gentle renewal of neighbourhood fabric.

Increased complexity of building and development regulations restrict finance and delivery models, further reducing diversity. However, if three ‘lots’ replaced one, finance too would be distilled into more affordable components, allowing the house-and-land package to continue its heavy lifting.

Guy Gibson – property development

Many of Queensland’s housing markets are ‘severely unaffordable’ as measured by ratios of median income to median housing price. The increase in house and land cost and established housing cost, compared to construction costs for new detached homes, suggests that price growth is strongly driven by land price escalation, so making more land available for development must be a significant component of any housing strategy.

We have a spectrum of issues in Queensland including homelessness; scarcity of public housing; a relatively small community housing sector; little institutional investment in housing (and an immature build-to-rent sector); high cost base for multi-unit housing (especially high rise); low vacancy rates; inadequate greenfield land supply; high cost of serviced land as costs are being front loaded onto home buyers; community opposition to infill and redevelopment; lack of diversity in dwelling stock in many locations; little housing available for key workers; and high demand for larger houses as a result of COVID and working from home.

Accordingly, there is a need for: more shelter and wrap-around services for the homeless; crisis accommodation for women fleeing domestic violence; a massive investment in public housing to address the backlog; expansion of role of the community housing sector; more greenfield land availability; more infill opportunities for ‘gentle density’; more public spending on urban infrastructure; reduced minimum development requirements and standards to reduce the cost base of new dwellings; and regulatory reform to expedite planning and engineering approvals.

Natalie Rayment – urban planning

The biggest challenge, from a planning perspective, is the not in my backyard (NIMBY) mindset that delays, blocks or adds cost to housing. Over time, this influences housing policy to the extent planning schemes ban, gold plate or delay new housing.

Instead, we need people saying Yes in my backyard (YIMBY) to new housing and diverse housing, and housing policy that legalises (or removes ‘bans’ on) missing middle housing (anything between a house and a high rise – think duplexes, rowhouses or walk-up apartments) in all neighbourhoods, stops gold plating new housing (which simply pushes up costs, like $110,000 per additional car parking space) and speeds up approvals.

Zoning out (or banning) housing types, gold plating and delaying housing is, in essence, housing denied.

When we say no to new housing, we need to think about what we’re saying yes to. Saying no to a diversity of housing in established neighbourhoods is saying yes to urban sprawl, greater reliance on cars, more time commuting, expanded infrastructure networks, pressure to clear – the list goes on.

Saying yes to more housing and diverse housing in established areas will not only tackle these challenges, but will ensure the solutions aren’t counter to our climate, resilience and cost of living.

Antonia Mercorella – real estate, property and housing economics

The misalignment between demand and supply of housing has created accessibility and affordability issues for Queenslanders. To address these issues we should focus attention on boosting housing supply.

We need a bi-partisan approach across all three levels of government that both rectifies the shortfalls from the past, and plans for the one million extra residents expected to call Queensland home over the next decade.

Queensland requires a stable regulatory and taxation environment to support development of fit for purpose dwellings that meets the needs of all Queenslanders regardless of location, age or stage in life.

Simplified planning and zoning regulations to fast-track developments is also required across the state. Further, tax incentives for investors need to be part of any sensible policy discussion into the future to ensure that rental properties are not lost to the short-term letting market. Incentives are also required to encourage downsizers to relocate to more size appropriate dwellings in the form of stamp duty relief.

Social and inclusionary housing across the state needs to be developed with appropriate consideration given to the most vulnerable in our society.

Finally, courageous leadership and long-term vision from all levels of government is required to bring the community along the journey.

Dr Sharon Harwood – urban planning

The three biggest challenges that I think will affect rural and regional Queensland are social housing, supply on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander owned lands and regional planning.

People on the social housing register have typically been on the register a long time, with high proportions experiencing homelessness, compromised health and wellbeing and a significant proportion who have experienced or are trying to escape domestic violence.

Coupled with the high prices of construction in Far North Queensland (FNQ) and the distances that the goods and services must travel, FNQ really is in the midst of a social housing crisis. There are both spatial and social equity considerations to be made when planning and allocating funding for social housing in Queensland.

In addition, I believe more effort needs to be placed on working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land holding entities (PBCs) to identify places that are suitable for housing on their estates. This provides an opportunity to create Aboriginal construction and housing development businesses and skills, much like the Māori Iwi nations have done in New Zealand on their lands.

The regional plans outside of SEQ need far more emphasis on land supply and housing needs. Each local government should work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait land holders when they examine and plan their housing and land supply requirements over a 10-year horizon (including social and affordable housing). These local plans should be included within the regional plans and infrastructure planned and scheduled accordingly.

Darren Mew – property development, urban design and affordable housing

The planning, delivery, ownership, financing, and access to housing is complex and multilayered.

With around 160,000 households across Queensland falling into the category where people are locked out of or unable to sustain their housing, it is evident that despite best efforts, new approaches are needed to address Queensland’s housing challenges including:

• Going upstream in our thinking – shift the value capture and cost benefit analysis assessments to a 100-year timeframe, to set the long-term conditions to achieve a seemingly impossible future – ‘Every Queenslander has access to a home they can afford’.
• Diversify our means of supply for affordable and social housing – favour financial and ownership models through community housing providers to capture and retain state investment, in perpetuity, building a solid foundation for compounding growth.
• Unlock the latent value of underutilised government assets and housing portfolio – leverage assets for staged urban renewal of precincts across Queensland to underwrite attraction of third-party investment to accelerate housing supply.
• Facilitate social infrastructure contributions – for the financing of affordable and social housing across Queensland, including through town planning frameworks and major projects delivery methodologies.

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