Leading community housing provider (CHP), Compass Housing Services, has welcomed the Queensland government’s $267 million building stimulus announced on June 16 as a good start to boost economic recovery while tackling the state’s housing crisis.

Compass Managing Director Greg Budworth said the package will boost housing supply and support a range of housing users including the state’s most vulnerable people.

Mr Budworth said the Works for Tradies housing program will deliver 215 new, urgently needed, social housing properties homes by the end of the year across the Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, Gladstone, Wide Bay, Moreton Bay, Toowoomba and Ipswich.

He said the package could work harder for state taxpayers by allowing not for profit CHPs to manage the new properties.

“CHPs can attract Commonwealth Rent Assistance subsidies which they can leverage to build more social and affordable housing,” Mr Budworth said.

He said it was important that the state and Federal government’s worked together to build even more social housing.

“Queensland has 21,000 households on its social housing waiting lists and a report we prepared last showed these figures would be higher if everyone eligible applied for social housing.”

“Nationally, we have a shortage of more than 400,000 affordable homes for low income households.”

“Unlike the Federal Government’s Homebuilder Scheme, this package will stimulate new construction activity rather than just subsidising projects that would have happened anyway.”

He said the focus on regional Queensland was also welcome.

“There tends to be a focus on the high housing prices and rents in capital cities but our research shows that many people in regional Australia, who have lower incomes than those in capital cities, experience housing stress.”

Modelling by the Community Housing Industry Association and National Shelter, as part of the Social Housing Acceleration and Renovation Proposal, shows that investing in 30,000 new social housing homes over four years will create between 15,500 and 18,000 full time equivalent jobs per year.