Housing Minister Leeanne Enoch welcomed the report,saying it had come at “exactly the right time” amid an increasingly competitive private rental market,with further cost-of-living and housing pressures ahead.
“That housing register has to be really accurate so we can look at ... what is the need,” she told reporters on Tuesday morning. “If that requires us to move our targets ... for new builds of social and affordable housing,that’s the data that we need to be able to make an accurate decision.”
Enoch also heaped blame on the former federal government for cutting funds for housing and homelessness services,saying she was looking forward to meeting with her state and federal counterparts at a meeting in Melbourne on Friday.
“The[Labor] federal government made an election commitment toestablish a $10 billion housing investment fund to see 30,000 new social and affordable homes built across the country,” Enoch said. “I’m looking forward to making sure Queensland gets its fair share in that.”
The Queensland Audit Office found the social housing register,which featured 30,922 households as of March,had grown by 78 per cent in four years,and current processes to manage it were “not effective”.
It found average annual growth could take the number of applicants to almost 48,000 by 2025 unless the Department of Communities and Housing updated the register to include only those able to be contacted by the department and deemed in “very high need” of housing.