Holiday home owners in northern NSW are being urged to offer their properties to flood-affected victims as the region grapples with a deepening housing crisis made worse by the flood emergency.
Thousands of homes in the Northern Rivers and Tweed regions have been left damaged or uninhabitable by the deadly floodwaters.
Housing supply in the region has been described as "the biggest ongoing humanitarian crisis out of this event" by the Tweed Shire Mayor Chris Cherry.
'We need your home'
Cr Cherry said homeowners looking to help should consider returning short-term holiday properties to the rental market.
"If there is ever a time that you've wanted to help, what we need right now is to have your home be put back into the permanent rental market because people need shelter right now," Cr Cherry said.
Cr Cherry said she met NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet about the dire need for long-term rentals.
"I was with the Premier yesterday saying that is our greatest need — temporary accommodation and ongoing affordable accommodation in our shire," she said.
"Please, could he use whatever levers he has to talk to short-term holiday letting."
Temporary housing not enough
The Northern Rivers was already suffering a rental squeeze before the flooding catastrophe.
Hundreds of flood victims have already been put into hotels across the shire.
"But that's very, very short term — that's three or five days," Cr Cherry said.
Real Estate Agent Paul McMahon said home owners across the region were already offering free short-term rentals.
"Anything we can do to help these people that are suffering would be very good."
But he's warning that giving up holiday homes could have a long-term tourism impact on a flood and COVID-ravaged region.
Relinquishing not silver bullet
Mr McMahon says the billion-dollar holiday industry is the biggest earner in the Northern Rivers.
"It plays a really significant part in the... jobs, the whole bit for the Tweed," he said.
"If you start playing with it too much, then all of a sudden, your restaurants will start disappearing.
"A lot of the other work for everyone from electricians to cleaners to gardeners ... everything will start disappearing."
Mr McMahon said new owner-occupiers had taken rental and holiday home stock out of the already stretched market.
"Even now, with everything going on, you still need some accommodation for workers coming into the area."
More subdivisions needed
SQM Research Property Analyst Louis Christopher said the appeal might fall on deaf ears.
He said short-term rentals were in strong demand because of COVID.
“I get there’s an immediate need here and now, but I don’t know how many landlords are going to respond to that,” he said.
Mr Christopher said there was an existing housing supply issue in the Tweed Shire before the floods.
He said council had been reticent to rezone land for development with many five-acre ‘lifestyle’ blocks in the region that could be subdivided.
“That's the reality of what it's been used for, it’s just lifestyle.
