By Jenel Hunt
News of about 20 families of children at Warwick State High School living in tents, caravans and even swags, brought the subject of the housing crisis on the Southern Downs to the fore at the recent Southern Downs Regional Council statutory meeting.
At the meeting in Stanthorpe on 21 February, Councillor Cynthia McDonald asked the CEO Dave Burges what was being done to address the immediate concerns of the community.
“It is an issue of such concern to me. On Friday alone, I went to give out the Mayor’s Award at the Warwick High School and found that there were 20 families, which totalled about 60 children, who were sleeping rough and trying to complete their education.
“Some of them were sleeping in swags and trying to complete their senior years at school. I think we’re absolutely at crisis point and it does concern me that it hasn’t been addressed here.”
She was referring to the Speaking Up for Southern Downs publication that has been recently prepared by the Southern Downs Regional Council.
“I want the community to understand that we are taking proactive steps as a council. I would like to have something in the document that talks about the grave concerns about the housing crisis that we are going through at the moment and how we as a council are looking at it.
“I was shocked at the figures that the hierarchy at the Warwick High School gave to me in regards to the amount of students impacted in this manner. I went to the Community Van on Sunday night to see how many people were in attendance for the giving out of meals to those that are homeless or struggling. The general figures are 70 to 100. There were about 90 there on Sunday night, reaffirming the concerns I have in regards to the homeless and the housing situation and the cost of living.”
Mr Burges said the document referred to by Cr McDonald was targetted at federal and state governments rather than the local community, although the publication was available on the council website for all to see.
He said the council had been working for ‘a solid 12 months’ in terms of what it could do and ‘what levers we can pull as an organisation to have a positive impact on the housing crisis’.
“We will be providing an agenda item at the next council meeting tabling our local housing action plan for adoption,” he said.
“We are contributing to the housing issue in the region in various ways as much as we can. We’re trying to free up residential land and council will probably be building some housing for our staff. That’s not a short-term measure.
“We are actively working with the Department of Resources in terms of trying to streamline their processes to free up the availability of some council land that is reserved or has National Title over it.
“We are still actively working with community housing providers to encourage them to come to the region. Again, none of these are short- or medium-term [measures]. I’m still in discussion with one company that presented to council in 2023 about undertaking a project in our region.”
Mr Burges said that as the Speaking Up document was aimed towards federal and state governments, a better way to let the community know about the council’s activities regarding the housing crisis was through targetted press releases.
