(Adopted February 2023)
Principles
The Queensland Greens believe that:
1. Everyone has a human right to housing that is safe, secure, accessible, well-designed, sustainable and affordable.
2. Housing should be used to house people, and should not be treated as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.
3. First Nations peoples’ housing needs should be met as a matter of urgency.
4. The government should provide sufficient public and not-for-profit community housing to meet existing and projected gaps in housing need.
5. Governments should not provide financial incentives that encourage real estate speculation. Government intervention in the property market should aim to guarantee access to housing and affordable housing supply across all tenure types.
6. Affordable housing in a liveable community is a crucial determinant of health and wellbeing, and is an important precondition for social and economic participation and gaining access to other social services.
7. Private rental market systems tend to systematically exploit tenants.
8. Owners of rental housing must maintain the liveability and quality of their properties.
9. No tenant should be evicted into homelessness.
10. The government must protect tenants’ rights to safety, security of tenure, privacy and a well-maintained home.
11. New urban developments should be accessible, environmentally sound, close to employment opportunities, services and public and other sustainable transport infrastructure, and should facilitate community interaction.
12. There must be a sufficient diversity of housing types being built to meet different community needs for a variety of tenants and owners.
13. Public participation in the planning, assessment and development of housing should be encouraged and facilitated by planning authorities.
14. All housing developments should be based on principles of Universal Design, sustainable design and urban planning.
15. New housing must be built with disability accessibility in mind so that disabled people not only have access to secure housing but people do not have to leave their homes if they become disabled.
16. Land which is zoned for residential accommodation should not be developed as short term rental accommodation.
Aims
Note: All references to ‘landlords’ and ‘tenants’ include situations where the landlord is a government entity or non-profit housing provider, and a tenant is renting public housing or community housing.
The Queensland Greens will:
1. Eliminate homelessness and housing-related poverty.
2. Ensure First Nations people have access to adequate, secure, well-maintained, safe, affordable and culturally appropriate long-term housing wherever they live.
3. Support strategies for ending homelessness that emphasise long-term solutions in preference to temporary emergency responses.
4. Acquire or build sufficient public and community housing so that everyone who desires to live in public housing has the opportunity to do so, and no-one has to go on a waiting list for housing.
5. Provide sufficient funding to continually renovate, maintain and improve public and community housing stock, and ban the sell-off of public housing to the private sector.
6. Provide sufficient government funding for emergency accommodation, transitional accommodation and supported accommodation in all regions of the state, including specialised short-term accommodation for vulnerable and oppressed social groups, such as First Nations people, adults and children affected by domestic violence, refugees and asylum seekers, older women, young people with an out of home care experience, people who are at risk of institutionalisation and people who have been released from detention or prison, ensuring sufficient exit options to long term accommodation.
7. Require new public housing to be built with disability accessibility in mind and existing public housing must be refitted to the same standards where possible.
8. Implement standards for all new housing to be built with disability accessibility in mind.
9. Provide sufficient resources and funding for housing support programs that help people sustain tenancies.
10. Require developers of new multiple-dwelling projects to permanently allocate a proportion of dwellings or lots as non-profit affordable rental housing.
11. End ‘without grounds’ evictions for all tenancy agreements and ensure no tenant is ever evicted into homelessness.
12. Introduce rent increase caps or freezes where necessary to prevent worsening housing stress and to improve tenants’ security of tenure.
13. Ensure tenants have the right to make minor, reversible modifications to their home, such as installing fixtures like shelves and safety rails.
14. Ensure tenants have a presumed right to keep pets in rental dwellings and that landlords bear the onus of justifying why specific circumstances mean a pet should not be permitted.
15. Ban regular property inspections of rented homes and ensure landlords and agents are only permitted to inspect a rented home:
a) at the end of a fixed term lease, or
b) when a tenant moves in or out, or
c) if the landlord has reasonable grounds to believe a tenant is causing damage to a home in excess of the value of the bond.
16. Ban tenant blacklists.
17. Require landlords to address or initiate repairs for time-sensitive maintenance issues (such as significant roof leaks, severe mould, broken locks and latches, faulty electrical switches and circuits, and faulty plumbing) within 36 hours of being notified by the tenant.
18. Require all landlords to ensure rental dwellings remain safe and comfortable in all weather conditions without excessive power consumption (such as by installing insulation, ventilation, fans, landscaping vegetation etc. as necessary), and enforce strong, world-leading energy efficiency standards for all rental homes.
19. Ensure tenants of both public and private rental housing can offset their power bills through renewable energy generation, such as via rooftop solar or opportunities to participate in off-site community-owned renewable energy schemes.
20. Ensure that free advocacy and legal advice services for tenants are sufficiently resourced to provide quality legal support for every tenant who seeks it, including situations where tenants require advice regarding their rights in relation to other tenants.
21. Introduce democratic processes for tenants and people without housing to participate in and contribute to policy decisions regarding housing organisations and housing support services.
22. Ensure strict financial penalties are enforced against landlords or real estate agents who breach Queensland tenancy laws (such as by engaging in rent bidding).
23. Legislate an oversight body with the powers and capacity to penalise unlawful, inappropriate, and poor faith dealings by real estate agents and property managers, against renters.
24. Strengthen and broaden adjudication and enforcement powers for the bodies that oversee and arbitrate tenancy laws and agreements (such as the Residential Tenancies Authority), including the power to compel landlords to refund rent where a home has been partially or wholly unliveable due to poor maintenance, mould, pest infestations, nearby construction noise pollution, or disaster-related damage.
25. Require all advertisements for the sale or lease of residential properties to accurately disclose and include photographs of standardised accessibility information, such as ramp gradients, doorway widths, elevator size, presence of steps, and the floor areas of toilets, bathrooms, kitchens and bedrooms.
26. Require all advertisements for the sale or lease of residential properties to disclose all environmental hazard risks including flood height records and projections where available.
27. Use financial disincentives such as targeted rates categories, levies or land taxes to discourage investment property owners from leaving dwellings vacant for more than six months.
28. Stop the use of residential dwellings (other than a person's primary residential dwelling), including secondary dwellings as for-profit short-term accommodation, and ensure that demand for short-term accommodation is primarily met through purpose-built hotels, motels, bed-and-breakfasts hosted by the owner occupier, or government-owned transient worker accommodation.