The affordable housing crisis is costing Queensland business billions, so what can we do?
13.02.2023
Find out from with Dr Greg Usher from Housing All Australians, what the social and economic costs are when there’s a lack of affordable housing.
Lack of affordable housing will cost Queensland businesses billions of dollars in lost productivity this year, and failure to act will only see that figure increase annually.
A new economic study, Give Me Shelter, commissioned by the business-led, not-for-profit, Housing All Australians (HAA), shows that decades of under-investment by successive state and federal governments has seen social and affordable housing stock plummet. This means there simply isn’t enough housing for key workers, let alone the vulnerable in our society. Give Me Shelter quantifies the long-term financial impact of continuing to ignore this issue at $25 billion per annum by the year 2051. That’s a figure we, as a society, simply can’t afford to ignore.
Recently, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Queensland’s Sunshine Coast region alone, was losing $786 million per year in economic output as a direct result of the lack of affordable housing in the area. That’s a lot of money that could have been spent on hospitals, roads, schools, parks, and our communities.
The research cited in the Sydney Morning Herald was compiled for the “Everybody’s Home” affordable housing campaign by Impact Economics and Policy and shows the surge in prices and rents is making it increasingly difficult for regional areas to attract workers. House values along the Sunshine Coast hit an annual growth rate of almost 36 percent, with the median value at $1.1 million. Most Australians simply can’t afford houses that cost this much, let alone rent them. This current trajectory is simply not sustainable.