Price control, government ownership on agenda for rental crisis talks (2024)

Government-backed build-to-rent schemes could shake up the “small-scale landlordism” that dominates Australia’s rental market, according to a report prepared for the Queensland Council of Social Services.

“The model of small-scale landlordism that currently dominates private rental provision in Australia [is] a model that is more oriented to the speculative pursuit of capital gains,” the report states.

The QCOSS report A blueprint to tackle Queensland’s housing crisis was released on Monday morning, weeks before the Queensland government would reconvene its Housing Summit.

The reports also promotes the use of “inclusionary zoning” to mandate a proportion of social and affordable housing in larger residential developments.

“It is used across the UK and in some parts of the US to augment affordable housing supply and, to a much more limited extent, in a small number of Australian jurisdictions; South Australia, ACT and in the City of Sydney,” the report states.

Brisbane median rental increases between March 2020 and September 2022 – 33 per cent for houses and 23 per cent for apartments – were “close to the highest rental inflation rates for any capital city during the period”.

With calls growing for price caps, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said the government was “looking very seriously at how a rental cap can be put in place”.

“I understand that this is a big issue for families, they are constantly being faced with huge increases in rent,” Palaszczuk told reporters on Monday.

The premier’s comments were welcomed on Monday afternoon by Tenants Queensland and an alliance of other housing groups who last week protested outside State Parliament.

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While it is unclear how any rental cap would be enforced, Tenants Queensland chief executive Penny Carr congratulated Palaszczuk “for putting this important issue on the table”.

The report argues Australia’s private rental sector is “distinguished internationally” by its unusually high proportion of small-scale private landlords - one in five taxpayers.

However, the report highlights the potential benefit of the Queensland government’s pilot build-to-rent schemes, where “up to 490 of the 1200 units produced across the currently approved developments will be subsidised, affordable rental properties”.

All three are being built in Brisbane: on Brunswick Street in Fortitude Valley, at Skyring Terrace in Newstead and one on the site of the former Children’s Court on Quay Street, Brisbane.

The report finds more Queenslanders rent – 30.8 per cent compared with Australia overall at 27.8 per cent - and more needs to be done to provide different housing types.

There are fewer Queenslanders (2.8 per cent) in public housing than Australia overall (3.1 per cent), and fewer Queenslanders in community housing (0.6 per cent) than other states (0.8 per cent).

One in 10 rental households in Logan, Beaudesert and the Gold Coast are paying more than one-third of their income in rental.

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A recent report from Brisbane City Council found the region needed to provide new homes for 14,000 new residents each year by 2041.