Socially minded residents who are trying to help put a roof over other people’s heads in Noosa’s housing crisis say they are being unfairly penalised by the council.
Sonja Howard was so shocked to see women with babies sleeping in cars in affluent Noosa that she decided to build a cabin on her Cootharaba acreage.
But getting council approval for the $8000 cabin has skyrocketed to $40,000 and on top of that the low-income family was slugged another big ‘trunk tax’ of $5,600.
Mrs Howard has labelled the council “draconian” for enforcing its “bureaucracy gone mad”, which has not only cost them a fortune but made the whole experience frustrating and stressful.
“My family has tried to help another family out, and the council who can’t provide reasonable housing viability for the people it taxes prolifically, puts its greedy grubby paw out again,” said Mrs Howard.
“We can’t understand why we would get slugged with this obscene tax. My husband already pays income tax. We pay rates for garbage. We have no town water out here.”
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The Howards had wanted to install a cosy cabin so a mother and child in Noosa could have somewhere to live — and they didn’t want to charge rent.
They sold a car to buy the cabin but the extreme costs imposed by council have placed the Howards in debt they had not bargained for.
“My husband and I put a cabin on our property to try and ‘do our bit.’ We followed the exhaustive list of demands from council to secure approval to have the dwelling to assist in remedying a problem that they simple cannot,” Mrs Howard said.
Among the $40,000 costs they were forced to bear when getting approval for the cabin, which had already been certified at its original site on a neighbouring property just 3km away, were:
- A special transport truck to move the cabin from 3km away which required a $20,000 bond
- An architect had to be employed to redraw the plans even though the cabin was already built
- The property had to be recertified (it was already certified for its existing location)
- Septic upgrade and stumping
Despite having a huge expanse of land to give the cabin its own private space, they were forced to erect it close to the main dwelling.
Then after that unpleasant and lengthy process, council then slugged the Howards a $5600 trunk tax, with $1400 due by July and the rest six months later.
The family has been forced to sell more possessions to cover the $5,600 bill which would take one-quarter of their extremely modest annual household income (Sonja’s husband works as a school chaplain).
“What can be done? This tax is a major inhibitor to people wanting to get a second dwelling. $5,600 may not seem much for the councillors of Noosa, but out here in Cootharaba, that is a tonne of cash,” said Mrs Howard.
“People are homeless, desperate, families are living in cars for goodness sake. Whilst those who are trying to help get taxed, excessively. Something is rotten in the state of the Sunshine Coast.”
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The Noosa region is in the grip of a terrible housing crisis which has forced people to leave their own community and market themselves online in a desperate bid to attract the attention of someone with an affordable house or room to rent.
The council and independent state MP Sandy Bolton are working together on solutions and as sunshinecoastnews.com.au recently revealed, one of the options is a plan to enable more people to build “secondary dwellings” by changing some of the regulations.
A Noosa Council spokesperson said infrastructure charges were issued on all development approvals as a contribution towards providing ‘trunk’ infrastructure such as transport, parks, stormwater and sewage.
(Where the Howards live has no town water, sewage or kerbing.)
“The amount of the charge is set by council resolution and varies for each land use based on a development’s impact on the trunk network, with the charge capped for each land use by the planning legislation,” said the Noosa Council spokesman.
“Under the planning legislation, the maximum charge set by the state for all one and two-bedroom dwellings is $21,590, but council has adopted a charge of $6,437 for secondary dwellings recognising the important role secondary dwellings play in supporting families.”
Currently, secondary dwellings are only allowed to accommodate members of the same household such as a grown teenager or a grandparent ie. as a ‘granny flat’.
Mrs Howard said her experience trying to help people in need proved that council’s current rules were too onerous, expensive and rigidly enforced.
“We see it for what it is, a money grab that’s exploiting people in difficult circumstances,” said Mrs Howard.
“No wonder people don’t bother. We bothered because we love our community and we hope other people will bother because there is a need, there is a desperate need.”
