E-Petition

Queensland residents draws to the attention of the House the dreadful rate of homelessness, and the lack of available short term and crisis accommodation in Queensland, while Government owned properties are left vacant when they could be put to good use. 

TMR acquires sites (houses, units, hotels, offices) for future works such as Cross River Rail and the Gold Coast Light Rail expansion and they remain empty for months or even years.

TAFE Queensland left the Ridgeway TAFE site empty for 8 years before demolishing it. Pallara State school closed in 2015 with no future plan. 

These vacant properties all require security and maintenance which is a cost to the Government and tax payers which could be reduced or eliminated. 

These properties could be used by 'not for profit' organisations to provide short term and crisis accommodation and other facilities to help the homeless. 

Your petitioners, therefore, request the House to do all in its power to ensure Government departments identify vacant and underutilised properties of all types and list them in a public domain for 'not for profits' to review. And that each property identified by a 'not for profit' as suitable for its needs, be made available to that 'not for profit' at no cost, to be used as crisis or short term facilities in order to help the homeless with somewhere safe to stay. The government should not stipulate a minimum tenure for the site to be a valid proposition.