A town planner and Churchill Fellow says the Gold Coast needs a shift in planning and community attitudes to better manage the city's housing affordability woes.
Martin Garred said zoning regulations dated "back to the Australian dream" where people wanted a big house with a clothes line in the backyard.
"There's a growing generational and economic divide emerging of people who can afford homes and people who can't," he said.
"It is affecting people that it never affected before."
Gold Coast City Council planning committee chair Cameron Caldwell said the Australian dream was certainly changing.
"Everyone's version of a home is quite different these days," he said.
"Newer generations want to make sure they are well located near services, employment and good recreational activities.
"That means that they actually want to downsize the backyard, maybe to a courtyard in a duplex."
But despite a "very strong narrative around high-rise and unit developments", Cr Caldwell said the council was focused on prioritising single-family houses.
'Different ways to live'
Mr Garred said the Gold Coast couldn't afford to keep building out.
"We've got the ocean on one side and the hinterland on the other, we've got no where else to go," he said.
"We've got to look at different ways to live."
Mr Garred has studied US cities Portland and Minneapolis, which changed zoning laws to allow the construction of duplexes on land previously reserved for a single homes only.
"It's really like a salt and pepper effect," he said.
"You get a few popping up in your neighbourhood but not a street full of duplexes.
"In most parts of the Gold Coast, 60 to 70 per cent, you can only build a single house."
But Cr Caldwell said the community would expect to see suburban housing maintained.
"Would there be an appetite in the future to remove the sanctity of detached housing?" he said.
"Maybe at some point, beyond my lifetime it could happen [but] in the short term, here on the Gold Coast, we like things as they are."
'Inclusionary zoning'
Mr Garred said inclusionary zoning would require a certain percentage of new developments to be reserved for lower cost housing.
"If you think about how many high rises get built on the Gold Coast, if we had 20 per cent of each of those providing affordable housing, there's a really big opportunity there," he said.
"That's something that hasn't really been used in Australia before.
"[It] has generally been relatively controversial because of the impact it has on the economics of the development."
But Cr Caldwell said the policy was very interventionist.
"The better way to manage the approach to affordable housing is to make sure we’re putting more housing in some of the suburbs that support that kind of housing," he said.
"Premium beachfront locations are at a different price point perhaps to places like Southport west, Labrador and Biggera Waters."
Population pressures
The Gold Coast's population is expected to reach about 1 million by 2041 under state government growth targets.
158,900 new dwellings must be built, 127,900 of which must be within already urbanised areas.
Mr Garred said the Gold Coast needed at least 5,000 new dwellings built per year.
"Until recently we weren't even close to meeting half of that target," he said.
Runaway Bay, Labrador, Biggera Waters and Southport were identified as targeted growth areas for higher-density developments as part of proposed changes to council's planning scheme.
But Mr Garred said that had been "really challenging" for the community to accept.
The council last year reduced proposed densities for those suburbs by 41 per cent after four rounds of community consultation, pending state government approval.
No reprieve in sight
According to the Real Estate Institute of Queensland, the Gold Coast's vacancy rate has fallen from a high of 5.2 per cent in June 2011, to 0.6 per cent in September 2022.
The median rent for a house has reached $868 a week — up by $248 since 2019, according to CoreLogic.
By mid-2022, the median house price was $875,881, a 32 per cent jump over the previous 12 months.
While the state government has doubled funding for social and affordable homes, CoreLogic head of research Tim Lawless said the impact wouldn't be felt in the market until 2024.
"We're expecting migration, particularly net overseas migration, [to be] rebounding and that flows directly and immediately into rental demand," he said.
"Interstate migration remains really strong, internal migration rates from other areas in Queensland seem to be favouring the coastal markets of south-east Queensland as well."
