Ugly truth about the housing crisis

Gold Coast planning chief Mark Hammel has challenged governments to be honest about the severity of the housing crisis, warning that city living will be a privilege of the rich unless suburbia embraces higher density living.

Cr Hammel, the Chairman of the Gold Coast City Council Planning Committee, was speaking at the Bond Business School event Future Horizons: The Gold Coast's Path to 2032.

“One of the biggest problems at the moment is you have all levels of government making announcements in this space weekly, if not daily,” Cr Hammel said.

“Our Prime Minister will say ‘we're going to build this many dwellings’, but all I hear from industry bodies is even if every single builder in the country was working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, we can't build that many dwellings.

“We're not being honest about the problem and we’ve got governments making ridiculous statements and targets which are going to be impossible with the current methods of doing things.”

Cr Hammel said the Gold Coast was projected to have a population of one million people by 2046, equivalent to adding the 380,000-strong population of the Sunshine Coast.

“Those residents will need 160,000 dwellings,” he said. “(Developer) Harry Triguboff’s latest tower has 1000 dwellings in it, so we'd have to repeat that 160 times.

“SkyRidge, the biggest greenfield development in the city, has 3500 lots (being developed) over 10 years. We'd have to repeat that 45 times over.

“Our growing pains are quite honestly just beginning and the size of the task is huge.”

Cr Hammel said population projections had been consistent for 30 years, rejecting suggestions a pandemic-era surge of new residents was to blame for the housing crunch.

“Now we're forced to make some fairly drastic moves because we can't bring land prices back down, we can’t control construction costs, so the only thing we can do is make the viability (of projects) stack up,” he said.

“That’s going to mean a conversation with the community about those buildings probably have to be taller and have more density, because otherwise, unless you are a very rich person, you will not be living in the city in the future.”

Growing pains on the southern Gold Coast have sparked fierce opposition to projects such as the proposed light rail extension to Gold Coast Airport and high-rise buildings along the beach.

Cr Hammel said migrants were often blamed for the influx of new residents to the Gold Coast but the reality was more complex.

“I hear a lot of ‘the city's full, you should put up the full sign’, but this isn't all people coming from interstate or overseas. We're also planning for dwellings for your kids and your grandkids,” he said.

“Do you want your kids and grandkids to be able to live in the same suburb or close by and have the same opportunities?

“Well, to do that we're going to need more dwellings.”

Cr Hammel, who is also the Councillor for Division 1 in the Gold Coast’s north, said Ormeau and Pimpama were the canaries in the coalmine, with 50,000 people moving to a region that had a population of 3000 15 years ago.

“I get it from people on the coastal strip about too much growth,” he said.

“I challenge them to come to Pimpama and see what too much growth too quickly looks like because it is next level what has happened up there and what we're having to do to fix some of the issues.

“Pimpama should have been an entry-level suburb into the Gold Coast. An affordable area is now a million dollars-plus in Pimpama which was just not what was meant to happen.”