Homelessness Is Increasing

 

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What do you do, when you are in government and people are finding it harder and harder to find somewhere to live? Bring in record immigration, that is what you do, and that is currently what is happening in Australia. Which is just going to add to the social housing problems that many Queenslanders are already facing.

“The ranks of Queensland's homeless are growing.

A new report released today found the number of homeless has shot up more than 20 per cent in five years — almost triple the increase nationally.

The report, from Queensland Council of Social Services (QCOSS) and The Town of Nowhere campaign, predicts more than 220,000 households in the state will not have affordable housing within 20 years.

In Logan, Beaudesert and the Gold Coast, 10 per cent of households are homeless, or living in unaffordable housing…

…Homelessness has risen by 8 per cent nationally since 2017, according to the report's author, University of New South Wales' Professor Hal Pawson.

In Queensland, it's gone up by 22 per cent.

In regional Queensland, the increase is "even more dramatic", up 29 per cent in four years, he said.

"In Brisbane rents are up by well over 30 per cent since the outbreak of COVID," Professor Pawson said.

"It is one of the pressures that is probably pushing homelessness increases higher in Queensland than in other parts of the country."

In the 2017-18 financial year homelessness services in regional and metro Queensland combined, saw on average 10,477 people a month.

In 2021-22 it was 12,739.”

Technically Australians are getting wealthier. Average incomes are increasing, average housing values and wealth is at levels never seen before. And yet homelessness is increasing because many people cannot keep up, why? Because what is really happening is that our currency is being devalued. Through inflation it is becoming capable of buying less and less, and so while you might get paid more in numbers, and your house is worth more than ever before in number’s terms, what you can buy with what you have is far less than previous generations. What's the point of your house going up 30% percent in value, if everyone's has? This has exacerbated over the covid years because of record stimulus poured out into the economy and terrible covid policies that broke the previously reliable supply chain.

This was predictable, eminently predictable, but people were so afraid of a mild virus that they were willing to set up their society for many future social ills just to potentially avoid getting sick for a short amount of time. Now Queenslanders and Australians in general are suffering in increasing numbers from a host of issues. 

Why have rents gone up so much? A combination of interstate immigration, with increased buying power due to stimulus for houses, alongside of increasing interest rates that drive the cost of owning and investment home up, all in response to taming inflation caused by covid policies and blamed on Russia and the war in Ukraine.

This should bother you. The State and Federal governments of the last few years have mismanaged our nation so greatly they have taken a temporary crisis and turned it into a long lasting one. One that shows no signs of abating.