Single mum Amie Rabinski has been couch surfing and living out of shopping bags for the past 18 months as she waits to get approved for a rental in the midst of Queensland's housing crisis.
The 27-year-old — who has two daughters Ruby, 7, and four-week-old Asha-Rose – said she had applied for around 200 properties but can't secure a place to live.
"It's been very hard, a lot of places just decline you or don't look at you," she said.
"They cancel inspections or say you don't meet the criteria.
"I used to get accepted within a week, I've never had this much of a struggle."
Ms Rabinski has been jumping between living with friends and her parents but wants her own place in Logan for between $300 to $360 a week.
Her and her daughters' possessions fill several shopping bags to make moving between places easier – but the casual disability support worker is desperate for a place to call her own.
"Living out of bags is very hard, especially for the eldest one," she said.
"She's not very happy living out of bags, having her toys in bags, and constantly having to travel back and forth to different places.
"It's really upsetting and depressing, no one should have to live like this.
"It makes me feel like it's no longer a lucky country, it's becoming more of a greedy country with the way things are with housing."
'Depression through the roof' after 156 rental applications
Disability pensioner Michael Powell lived with his wife Alison in the same rental at Riverhills in Brisbane's west for 17 years but had to move earlier this year when the owners wanted to move back in.
Over five months, the pair made 156 rental applications and took part in 60 inspections before finally securing a unit in Brassall, Ipswich.
"It was only pure luck on our side that the real estate agent was sympathetic to a couple of pensioners trying to get into another place or we wouldn't have been here," he said.
"It was very stressful, anxiety went through the roof, depression went through the roof."
The 63-year-old said he felt real estate agents were rejecting their application because they were pensioners.
Going from a four-bedroom to a one-bedroom place has meant the couple have had to store most of their belongings in the garage.
Mr Powell said the federal government needed to urgently increase the support offered by rental assistance and the state government needed to do more to utilise land and build more social housing.
"The local prison reserve has got nearly 5,000 hectares of land, if you demolish that you can put demountables there which can be built in 18 months," he said.
A 'perfect storm' of pressures
Housing supply issues in Queensland are the result of a number of complex, multi-faceted factors which are also being felt nationally.
The pressures in Queensland, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic, have been compounded by unprecedented population migration, limited land availability, record low rental vacancies, rising house prices, building supply issues, inflation, labour shortages, high fuel prices and multiple weather events.
Housing Minister Leeanne Enoch has previously said population growth has outpaced the delivery of new land supply, put unprecedented pressure on the private rental market and impacted social housing.
About 50,162 people moved to Queensland from other states last year — largely driven by the COVID-19 pandemic — according to figures from the Department of State Development, Infrastructure, Local Government and Planning.
Demographer and University of Queensland (UQ) senior lecturer Dr Elin Charles-Edwards said a combination of elements like greater than forecast interstate migration and population growth was putting pressure on the state's housing supply.
"The underlying driver is population growth but it's not quite as simple as just that factor," she said.
"We've seen a greater growth in the number of households than people because our population is ageing so it's sort of this perfect storm."
Dr Charles-Edwards said a study from UQ's City Impact Lab said young adults and baby boomers were bearing the brunt of the crisis, with those groups increasingly likely to live with other people.
"Our analysis of Australian Census data between 2016 and 2021 saw a change which told us that now younger people and older Queenslanders are less likely to form households," she said.
"This suggests an adaptive response to housing market stresses so if housing is in short supply, we see these people adapt and move in with family or friends."
There are currently 45,958 people on the social housing waitlist from 27,437 applications.
What are the solutions?
The Queensland government is hosting a state-wide summit tomorrow to address critical housing issues such as unlocking land and housing supply, fast-tracking social housing and finding solutions with all levels of government and the private sector.
It will involve a number of stakeholder groups like QShelter, Queensland Council of Social Services (QCOSS), the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, Property Council of Australia, Master Builders and the Planning Institute of Australia.
A number of strategies have already been commissioned by the state government to try to ease the housing pressure cooker.
After a housing roundtable held earlier this month, about 200 unused beds in a vacant student accommodation block at Griffith University's Mount Gravatt campus will be converted into emergency lodgings.
At the time, Deputy Premier Steven Miles said with Queensland facing a shortage of builders and supplies, and escalating costs, "the best early gains are in re-purposing under-utilised buildings that are already built".
The Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane has also assessed its property and identified about 87 blocks of land or sites that could provide an opportunity for housing.
Mr Miles has also urgently changed planning laws so that Queenslanders can rent unused granny flats for the next three years.
"We can move people into under utilised granny flats much more quickly than constructing new properties," Mr Miles said.
The Queensland government has also commissioned industry experts to investigate the impacts short-term rentals such as AirBnB and Stayz properties were having on the state's housing supply.
Mr Miles said state and local governments were undertaking an audit of land across the state that could be used for emergency accommodation.
Call to build 5,000 social homes a year
Griffith University Urban and Environmental Planning senior lecturer Dr Tony Matthews said the state government needed to look at other ways of achieving density on land zoned for housing.
"When it comes to density, there are many, many ways of achieving density without using more land," he said.
"There are examples all over the world of density done with great elegance, great beauty, great functionality and done at the human scale, which allows people to live in a place and also have active streets and active living around them.
"It can be done, we're just not doing as good a job here as we could be because we tend to keep using the same methods over and over again.
"It would require the state government to incentivise in some way because the big barrier ultimately is the private sector who has worked out their economic model and is reluctant to change that."
QCOSS CEO Aimee McVeigh said there needed to be a greater focus from the state government on social housing and called for a commitment out of the summit for 5,000 social homes to be built every year for the next decade.
"People living in cars, tents and motel rooms, young and old people couch surfing, and people sleeping on the street must be front of mind," McVeigh said.
"These people are in Brisbane, Cairns, on the Darling Downs, the Gold Coast and in regional, rural and remote towns.
"More than 10,000 Queenslanders are seeking help from specialist homelessness services every month.
"This summit must commit to every Queenslander having a roof over their head by 2032, and 5,000 social homes being built every year for the next decade."
