This is the joint submission to the Council's Short Stay Accommodation Local Law, made by myself as the Paddington Ward Councillor, the State representative for Maiwar Michael Berkman MP, and the Federal representative for Ryan Elizabeth Watson-Brown MP. Click on this link to read a pdf version.

Proposed Short Stay Accommodation Local Law 2025 Submission

Dear Dr Freeman,

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission regarding Brisbane City Council’s (The Council’s) proposed Short Stay Accommodation Local Law 2025 (the Local Law).

We represent thousands of residents of north-west Brisbane at all levels of government. As representatives, we have seen how many people are struggling to afford the soaring cost of rent.

The median rent within the Council area has risen 55% over the past 5 years, to $650 per week [1]. Median wages only rose by 24% [2].

Since 2022, the Queensland social housing waitlist has grown 28%, from 46,000 people in 2022, to 59,000 today. The waitlist growth within the Council’s local government area has outpaced the rest of the state, growing 52% in the same period to 11,500 people [3].

This is devastating communities.

To tackle this housing crisis, and treat housing as a right instead of a commodity, we have been calling for:

• massive investment in public housing, 
• phasing out tax concessions for property investors, 
• improving the rights of renters, 
• capping rent increases, 
• implementing vacancy levies, and 
• cracking down on short-term accommodation. 

After years of pressure from the Greens, we are excited to see the Council adopting a framework to regulate short-term accommodation.

We know that short stay accommodation is more profitable to a landlord than long-term renting. Over three nights, a tourist might spend $700 for a single bedroom in inner-Brisbane. That’s more than the median weekly rent in most of these suburbs. Hundreds of profit-seeking landlords have moved their properties out of the long-term rental market into the short stay accommodation market.

Between the reduced number of dwellings in the long-term rental market, and landlords seeking equivalent profits to short stay accommodation, the landlords across Brisbane raise the rent, making it even harder for renters to find a home.

This isn’t the only reason that rent has risen, but it is part of the problem. Skyrocketing rents are making more of Brisbane’s renters homeless, or pricing them out of this city. Renters have less and less money to spend at local businesses, so local economies, and especially neighbourhood high streets, are increasingly struggling.

The Council should take this chance to intervene.

The proposed local law does not include ‘freeing up properties for the long-term rental market’ as an aim, nor a mechanism to incentivise long-term renting over short-stay accommodation.

As such, we call on the Council to:

• make ‘freeing up properties for the long-term rental market’ an explicit aim of the local law, and
• increase the short-term accommodation rates to 1000% of the non-owner occupied rates (increasing the existing 65% surcharge to 900%).

To alleviate this housing crisis, the Council must stand up for local renters, and prioritise housing as a human right.

Please do not hesitate to contact my office on 07 3403 2520 if you would like to discuss this matter in more detail.

Kind regards,

[1] Residential Tenancy Authority. (n.d.). Median Rents Quarterly Data. https://www.rta.qld.gov.au/forms-resources/rta-quarterly-data/median-rents-quarterly-data

[2] ABS. (n.d.).  Employee earnings. Retrieved 02/02/2026 from https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/labour/earnings-and-working-conditions/employee-earnings/latest-release

[3] Queensland Government, (n.d.). Social housing register. Retrieved 02/02/2026 from https://www.data.qld.gov.au/dataset/social-housing-register