‘Beyond dire’: how the Queensland and NSW floods are worsening the rental crisis
The loss of thousands of homes means renters will have fewer properties to bid for and they will also be competing against flood-hit owner-occupiers

Julian Deridder works at Fred’s Place in Tweed Heads, supplying basic needs such as breakfast and showers to the homeless.
Every day he sees new people come in who simply cannot compete in a white-hot local rental market.
“Pre-floods the housing crisis was as bad as I can imagine it getting,” he said. “There was barely any private rentals available, even less in terms of social housing. And what private rentals were available were extremely expensive.”
Digby Hughes, senior policy officer at Homelessness New South Wales, describes the northern rivers housing market pre-floods as “beyond dire”.
“It was as unaffordable as anything else in Australia,” he said.
Rental vacancy rates in the region have hovered around 0.6%, according to Leo Patterson Ross, chief executive of the Tenants’ Union of NSW, compared with a healthy natural vacancy rate of somewhere between 3-5%.
“Anything under that means there are more tenants than available houses, which puts pressure on prices and people find it hard to find a home.
“Below 2% or 1% it really is an awful time to be looking for somewhere to live.”
Patterson Ross said while affordability had been an issue in Byron Bay for some time, the problem had spread in recent years as locals began relocating to cheaper surrounding areas.
“Places like Lismore that were nice places to live, but weren’t right on the beach, hadn’t experienced that same level of desperation until recently,” Patterson Ross said.
Based on SQM Research property data, Patterson Ross estimated the northern rivers was 2,300 homes short of a healthy tenancy rate ahead of the floods.
Now, would-be renters will not only have fewer properties to bid for but be competing against flood-hit owner-occupiers seeking temporary housing, many of whom will be backed with insurance money.
Emily Brady knows all about that.
The single mother of two girls aged five and 10 left her Taree rental property recently over a dispute with the landlord that she alleges was manufactured so they could put up the rent.
“My friend was offered to inspect the property soon after for $85 more a week than we were paying.
“There’s no compassion for families as tenants. They simply wanted more money.”

All of a sudden Brady was thrust back into a rental market that she says has tightened dramatically since the floods in Taree in March 2021.
At one inspection she saw 100 names on the real estate agent’s clipboard.
“That’s when it really sunk in that I’m in trouble here,” she said.
Instead, she resorted to buying a 1988 caravan and paying for a powered site.
“I’d lived in temporary accommodation previously, when I was escaping domestic violence, and I didn’t want that for my kids,” she said. “I did my best to look at it as an adventure.”
Now the heavy rain has rendered the caravan uninhabitable, forcing her to seek temporary accommodation from the Department of Communities and Justice anyway.
“I’d worked really hard to get back into the private rental market only to be forced out because I can’t afford it,” she said. “It’s definitely an example of what’s to come for these areas facing flooding now.”
Patterson Ross predicted some people would be forced to leave the region, at least temporarily.
Others would seek to share houses with extended family or friends, which can be “fine for a week or two but long term it really causes issues, both for people’s health and their relationships really suffer”.
Lastly, there would be people who move into long-term homelessness, he said.
Hughes said in some towns the situation would be made worse by the fact that temporary accommodation and homeless services themselves have been flooded.
Vulnerable people might also be tempted to compromise on the acceptable quality of rentals in a tight market, according to Patterson Ross.
“After floods, what you will often see is the integrity of the building has been compromised. So they’re more likely to leak, to develop mould, to suffer from draughts, and harder to keep comfortable in.”
He suggested local government areas might require more flexibility to adapt the mix of holiday rentals available through sites such as Airbnb.
“It’s a really complex issue, and means balancing the need for tourist money and employment. But at a time like this it highlights you do need the housing to ensure the community can stay, not be displaced and recover together.”
Asked for other possible solutions, Hughes said the “bottom line is what we do need is more investment from government in social housing. The far north coast is crying out for social housing.”
He also suggested that, as happened in Sydney during Covid lockdowns, the rules around temporary accommodation should be relaxed in order for people to get back on their feet.
Having already witnessed a growth in demand for homeless services of 30-40% in the past two years, Deridder said he was struggling to see how the region would cope with another influx.
“It’s a bit daunting to think about to be perfectly honest,” he said.
“A lot of people are going to be doing it really, really tough.”