Struggling renters told to leave Sunshine Coast due to housing crisis in 'heartbreaking' St Vinnies warning.

 Extract from ABC News

ABC Sunshine Coast

By Jacqui Street, Amy Sheehan, and Meg Bolton

Posted 2hours ago

Brenton Playford fears his family won't find a place to live after a rent increase.

(Supplied: Brenton Playford)

Residents struggling to find permanent accommodation in popular Queensland regional areas are being told they may have to move hundreds of kilometres away to secure long-term housing.

Key points:

• Welfare workers are telling struggling families to leave town as a rental crisis means they won't find a home locally
• High rental prices, low vacancies and demand from interstate arrivals are creating a housing crisis in some areas
• Sunshine Coast man Brenton Playford fears he won't find a home for his family, as his lease ends after nearly nine years

John Harrison from the St Vincent de Paul Society Queensland said the situation had become so dire, he encouraged some residents to leave the area.

"We have to be brutally honest, quite frankly, it's a difficult conversation but it has to be heard," Mr Harrison said, the organisation's northern diocese president.

"We've said to people, where we recognise that there's such a gap between the income they have and the rental market, 'We can't see a solution for you.'"

Mr Harrison has lived on the Sunshine Coast for two decades and has never seen a housing crisis as bad as the one gripping the region. 

"I know it's stressful for families, because they might have a network here, they may have children at school here," he said.

"But you can't live in a car for the rest of your life and that's what they would have to do if they were trying to stay here."

Dozens vying for one home

Noosa Heads tenant Brenton Playford has lived with his two children in a unit for eight and a half years but has been told he needs to find a new place in the next four weeks.

"At the moment, I don't really know what's going to happen because I've never been in a situation like this," he said.

Mr Playford's children Angus and Charlotte have lived in the same rental for almost a decade.

(Supplied: Brenton Playford)

Mr Playford said the owners of the apartment want to renovate but with a rental market so tight his rent will increase by an extra $200 a week.

"We went and had a look at a few [properties] that had 40 people in there trying to get the same place and a lot of people had already made arrangements to move in," he said.

Mr Playford said he feared for the future.

"It just feels like we are going to be out on the street," he said.

"What happens like when it comes to the 20th of May — are we going to be booted out?"

'Heartbreaking' struggle

Mr Harrison said homes were being snapped up by buyers from New South Wales and Victoria, causing a shortage of available properties to buy and rent.

He held back tears as he explained the helplessness of those who had become victims of the housing shortage.

"When I look at families here, and I see some of the awful situations they find themselves in, it's heartbreaking," Mr Harrison said.

John Harrison fears more people will become homeless because of the removal of COVID-19 government assistance.

(ABC Sunshine Coast: Meg Bolton)

"And all we can do is be as helpful as we can and try and make their journey a bit easier."

He said people were looking at accommodation more than 700km away in places like Emerald in Central Queensland, to ensure they had a place to call home.

"It used to be talking about Gympie, now we're talking about much further afield," Mr Harrison said.

He said the St Vincent De Paul Society was fielding dozens of calls from people each day, desperate to find accommodation.

The desperate situation had forced the charity to think of creative solutions.

"What we have looked at ... is maybe leasing some land locally where people aren't using the land — maybe we can put tents on it."

JobKeeper ending worsens situation

Maroochy Neighbour Centre chief executive Michael Henning said the lack of affordable accommodation had become worse during the pandemic and was exacerbated when JobKeeper ended.

"We've had a few new people sleeping in cars, that's their only asset, they haven't got a home," he said.

"It's right across the board — both genders — women that are homeless, men that are homeless and young people that are homeless."

Mr Henning says people experiencing homelessness have worked in tourism, hospitality and retail.

(ABC Sunshine Coast: Tara Cassidy)

Mr Henning said some people asking for help had previously been working in the local tourism, hospitality and retail industries.

"They were the major sectors that were heavily impacted with COVID-19 through loss of jobs, redundancies or retrenchments," he said.

"People working casually or who were underemployed, which is a lot in this region, all of a sudden didn't have any income.

"So they lost their rentals, went back to live with family, the street or moved interstate."

Mr Henning said it was time for politicians to step in with a solution.

"JobKeeper goes down and rent goes up, how does that work? People are really struggling," he said.

"The question is what happens now? It's the golden opportunity for governments to do something."

Impact on those already homeless

Mr Henning said the housing crisis had a major impact on homeless people who were awaiting accommodation through government systems due to a "larger pool" of people looking for homes.

"So the ones that have been waiting will either go down the bottom of the list, depending on what their needs are, or they compete with a much bigger pool now looking," he said.

Mr Henning feared the crisis would worsen tenfold once the government coronavirus supplements, that has currently been housing some of the nation's homeless, ended.

"Once the funding finishes, the question will remain, what happens to those people? Where will they go?" he said.

"I'm hoping they will go into some form of alternative accommodation, whether it be short-term or long-term, a combination — that would be fantastic.

"That would be a good outcome but I'm skeptical."

The coronavirus responses from the government for the homeless have not been guaranteed to continue, Mr Henning said.

"I fear that it will be business as usual and the homeless will be homeless again," he said.

"If that happens that's a great disappointment and that defeats the purpose of what the whole thing was about."