Noosa Council is greatly concerned by the housing crisis currently gripping the Shire. This is having a significant social and economic impact on the community and requires action by all levels of government as well as the broader community.
In November 2022, Noosa Council endorsed the Noosa Housing Strategy 2022, demonstrating its commitment to reducing inequity, promoting inclusiveness, and providing safe, affordable housing for residents to live, meet, and play.
Collaborative approach
Underpinning the success of this strategy will be ongoing open conversations and partnerships with the State and Federal Government, with community housing providers, private housing developers and with the Noosa community. In essence this can be summarised as ensuring there is the right amount of housing, of the right type and size, in the right place and with the right tenure for our community.
Regular monitoring and review
The strategy provides for regular monitoring and review to ensure our actions and interventions advance us towards meeting its objectives, to enable housing choice, diversity and affordability to meet the current and future needs of the community.
Informed by a Housing Needs Assessment
The Housing Strategy has been informed by a Housing Needs Assessment, endorsed by Council in December 2021. The Housing Needs Assessment is a comprehensive technical report on the context of housing and households in Noosa Shire.
Given the difficulty in finding secure accommodation and the number of people in or community doing it tough, many organisations and residents are asking what they can do to help Keep Noosa Home. In Council’s Social Justice Charter it’s acknowledged that everyone has a role to play in ensuring that Noosa Shire continues to prosper and thrive as an inclusive community both now and into the future.
The Ideas to Keep Noosa Home Fact Sheet provides a few ideas of how home owners might be able to share their home, yard or investment properties with locals, new workers or students.
In line with Council's commitment to determining the true extent of the housing problem, including who needs housing and what kind of housing they need, Council has subscribed to an on-line housing monitor specific to Noosa Shire. This digital resource will be updated each year and outlines housing supply and demand, housing diversity, affordability and availability. You can explore the housing story for Noosa at https://housing.id.com.au/noosa
The State Government provides the ability to create and view a housing profile for the Noosa Shire, or a smaller Statistical Area within Noosa Shire, such as the SA2s of Noosa Hinterland, Tewantin, Noosaville, Noosa Heads, Sunshine Beach (including Sunrise Beach and Castaways Beach) and Peregian-Marcus Beaches. You can for instance build a custom region selecting a few SA2s.
The area you select can be compared against other areas including the State, a different local government area, or the relevant Housing Service Centre of Maroochydore.
Like the State’s Regional Profile site, this collates various pieces of information from the census, from the Housing register, from the RTA, Department of Social Services, etc, You can access the Queensland Housing Profiles page https://statistics.qgso.qld.gov.au/hpw/profiles
While the Housing Profile is specific to housing you can access information on a broader range of issues through the State’s Regional Profile Page at https://statistics.qgso.qld.gov.au/qld-regional-profiles which allows you to look specifically at our residents (based on place of residence) or at our workforce (based on place of work).
Both pages are useful is identifying some of the underlying problems with our housing situation.