2021-12-13 GC Agenda - Item 8 -Attachment 1 - Housing Needs Assessment

Considering the top industry subdivisions of Noosa Shire, Food and Beverage Services were the
hardest hit. Nationally it had 35.6% less jobs at 11 April 2020 than it had at 14 March. One year on
it had not fully regained the numbers.
Construction Services did not suffer such a significant loss: jobs dropped by 4.5% but by July 2020
had recovered to the mid-March levels.
Jobs in Other store-based retail dropped by 10.6% by 11 April 2020. Jobs in Professional, scientific
and technical services except computer system design and related services dropped by 4.4% and
jobs in Preschool and school education dropped by 11.9%.
Workers between the ages of 15 and 19 years of age experienced the largest drop in jobs and
wages. For these young people employee jobs dropped by 9.9% between 14 March and 4 April
2020. Their wages dropped by 12.7% in that fortnight. Also hit hard were 20 to 29 year olds, for
whom employee jobs dropped by 8.8% and total wages dropped by 9.1%.
While all age groups were affected, employees in age groups 50-59 and 60 to 69 years fared slightly
better with job losses of 3.8% and 4.0% respectively and wage loss of 5.5% and 5.7% respectively.


3.9          Implications for housing sector
The above subsections indicate that there are many people in Noosa Shire who are on low incomes,
have insecure employment, are older and may be isolated from family, are living with physical
disability or other impairment. These residents particularly face challenges securing housing that
meet their needs and budgets. Unless there is diversity in housing types, including housing that is
both affordable and physically suitable, the situation will worsen.
Housing stress is typically described as occurring where a lower income household (i.e. households
in the bottom 40% of income distribution) is spending more than 30% of its gross household income
on housing costs.
The Queensland Statistician’s Office has sourced data from the Australian Government Department
of Social Services, Housing dataset in compiling a measure of affordability of private rent for low
income tenants. Income and rent are recorded for family and lone person households only and not
for the combined circumstances of group households. Only tenants receiving Centrelink assistance
and renting privately are included19. Table 13 below suggests that for each SA2 in Noosa Shire the
percentage of low income tenants paying more than 30% of their income on rent was higher than
the State figure. It was particularly high in coastal areas. Since June 2019 rents have risen
significantly so the situation is likely to have worsened.




19 Family tax benefit part A base rate recipients, low income working households and self-funded retirees who

are not receiving Centrelink benefits are excluded.


Noosa Housing Needs Assessment 2021                                                                 Page 42