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More than 1,300 representatives will attend a three-day National Housing Conference in Brisbane starting on Tuesday, to address difficulties and find solutions for the future of housing in Australia.
It comes as more than 25,000 people wait for social housing in the Sunshine State, while around 500 social housing properties have been built each year since 2017, according to Queensland Department of Housing data.
The biennial conference has been held for more than 20 years, designed to unite policymakers, service providers, researchers, planners and all tiers of government planners to improve housing outcomes.
Look back at how ABC readers and other Australians responded to this live moment.
Lexy: Over the next two days, the conference will also hear from experts from around the world. For example, from the USA, Canada and the UK, where institutional investors like superannuation funds are building affordable housing.
They will also look at ways to fix youth housing, we will hear from at least 17 people with lived experience of homelessness, and how to repurpose buildings.
In fact, the name of the conference is the way forward, and that is what they're trying to achieve: a solution to the way forward to this crisis.
The conference ends on Thursday and can be viewed online.
This is where we'll leave today's live coverage, but you can continue reading below or tune in to ABC News at 7:00pm (AEST).
Lexy: Can we expect any solutions to come out of this conference? Well, of course in the long-term, yes. But in the short term, no.
As we've heard, there is no quick fix to get us out of this current housing crisis hole. So that, in a way, brings little hope for people who are struggling to find somewhere to live at this point, but there will be hope in the future.
The ABC's Lexy Hamilton-Smith says Julie Collins, the federal housing minister, was among those in attendance on day one:
Lexy: Now, she of course outlined the $10 billion Housing Future Fund and what it means for all Australians. She also talked about how the rent-to-buy and how-to-buy schemes will work and how they're trying to build more social housing.
But she also said that this government can't repair 10 years of inaction on their own. We also heard from a former Mirvac boss, who talked about their scheme to build rent-to-buy apartments that they are renting out at really affordable rates and how successful that has been.
They also were looking at dilemmas like growing Airbnb's, people using their homes as crash pads for holiday makers, and also the one million homes that currently sit idle in Australia [and] what to do with those. Do we need more government regulation?
Wondering what this is? Join us next time we're live and be part of the discussion.
Conference host Michael Fotheringham said building more houses was critical, but it was a complex issue marred by material and worker shortages in the construction industry.
"It's a long road to get there. It's taken us several decades to get into the hole we're in now, it's going to take us 20 or 30 years to really fix the system," the managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute said.
"We're a way off meeting the demand for social housing.
"We need an order of magnitude more investment in that space but that's not easy for governments to do, there's not just infinite money to draw on."
Mr Fotheringham said Australia also needed to consider diversifying its housing supply for both suitability and environmental purposes.
"It's not just about the number of houses that we build, it's also what sort of houses we build," he said.
"There are some really important messages coming from Europe around sustainability of houses so the decarbonisation of housing, that's a really important environmental consideration going forward."
He said addressing all levels of housing was critical to improving outcomes across all demographics.
"Social housing is not separate from private rental accommodation and home ownership, they all interact with each other," he said.
'Start building tomorrow'
In his one-bedroom regional Queensland apartment, Mark Lovett knows he is one of the "very lucky" ones.
While he's in social housing now, three months ago, he was preparing to be homeless when the unit he called home for 10 years was removed from the National Rental Affordability Scheme.
Nurse Mark Lovett says he would have lost his job if he was forced into homelessness.(ABC Sunshine Coast: Meg Bolton )
"The thought of living in my car, it was just nothing I'd ever experienced in my life," Mr Lovett said.
"Then I had to sort of find somewhere to store my goods and it was just over the top in price as well so you're basically still paying your rent plus living in your car," he said.
Mr Lovett lived in a private rental in Gympie up until 10 years ago when he could no longer afford his weekly payments and joined the NRAS to receive subsidised rent.
After facing homelessness earlier this year, some residents of a Nambour apartment complex have been offered accommodation in social housing, while others are still in NRAS properties.(ABC Sunshine Coast: Meg Bolton )
Mr Lovett said trying to rejoin the rental market had been "shocking".
"Anyone on a pension, there's no way in the world that you could afford the absolutely inflamed prices that these landlords want," he said.
"People I talk to, in my line of work, they're all either moving home to mum and dad or mum and dad is moving in with them."
Queensland's rent has risen at the fastest rate across the nation with prices in Gladstone rising by 80 per cent, and 51 per cent in Noosa since 2017, according to the Queensland Council of Social Service.
"If they're going to have these big housing summits, they should just realise that the key thing is to build more affordable houses," Mr Lovett said.
"I'd rather that the government just see it for what it is. There's a shortage, and that shortage should be sorted out, straight away. Start building tomorrow. That's how I look at it."
More hits to come for Queensland
National Shelter chief executive Emma Greenhalgh is one of the delegates who will collaborate with housing industry stakeholders from across Australia and the world.
"One of the really important things around the conference is to really share not only what is happening in communities, but also about solutions that have worked and sharing those solutions," Ms Greenhalgh said.
She said rental reform was needed across the country to make rent more affordable and landlords more accountable for property inadequacies, including more resources for enforcement action.
More than 150,000 Queenslanders have unmet housing needs and 100,000 of those would typically be eligible for social housing, according to QCOSS.
Ms Greenhalgh said the housing crisis was being felt across the country, particularly in Queensland due to high levels of migration, but the situation would only worsen as the NRAS came to an end in 2026.
More than 36,000 properties have been part of the scheme since its inception, but by the end of the year, only 17,000 NRAS properties will remain.
"It's an undeniable fact the loss of NRAS will obviously disproportionately impact on low income households and while we're in a housing crisis, it is going to be incredibly difficult for them to find alternative housing," she said.
"Those households could potentially become homeless."
More than 100,000 homeless at Census
Federal Housing Minister Julie Collins told the conference on Tuesday that Labor "inherited a housing system in need of serious repair".
"The housing market is too difficult for many Australians, and too many Australians are experiencing or facing homelessness," she said.
"For too long housing policy in Australia has been far too guided by the here and now instead of the future, and progress on housing delivered by one government has been undone by another, particularly at the Commonwealth level.
"This is why our government has set about doing things differently."
The minister said around 122,000 people were estimated to be homeless on Census night.
"And nearly half — 46.7 per cent — of low-income earners who rent, spend more than 30 per cent of their weekly income on housing costs," she said.
"Behind these statistics are people."
Ms Collins said she, like so many others, had experienced public or community housing firsthand.
She said the government's $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund would be "the single biggest investment in affordable and social housing in more than a decade".
"It will be a secure, ongoing pipeline of funding for social and affordable rental housing, that will help generations of Australians," she said.
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