The Queensland Housing Strategy

16 Sep 2021

The Queensland Housing Strategy 2017-2027 redefines how the Queensland Government will deliver housing to support urban renewal, generate new jobs, provide affordable housing and drive innovative housing design that responds to contemporary housing needs. This ambitious policy, program and service delivery agenda was purposely designed to transform Queensland’s housing and homelessness service system to ensure that every Queenslander has access to a safe and secure home that meets their needs and enables them to participate in the social and economic life of the state.

The Queensland Housing Strategy 2017–2027 Research and Evaluation Program (the Partnership) was a partnership project between ISSR and the Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy (the Department). Led by ISSR’s Professor Tim Reddel, in partnership with UQ’s Schools of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Social Science and ARTD Consultants, the team provided support to the Department to design a flexible monitoring and evaluation framework (the Framework), and a policy and practice review that benchmarked the Housing Strategy against jurisdictions undertaking comparable housing reforms.

The Interim Analysis of the Housing Strategy’s First Action Plan was successfully used to support the Department’s 2020 State budget preparations.

Monitoring and evaluation together provide the necessary data to guide strategic planning, to design and implement programmes and projects, and to allocate, and re-allocate resources in better ways. The design of the Framework therefore involved extensive engagement and co-design with personnel at executive and operational levels of the Department and with selected external stakeholders The completed Framework specified how to collect and analyse credible evidence for policymaking, continuous quality improvement, and resource allocation to support program reform. The team also worked with the Department to co-design a service and data collection system where the focus is on the person and what they can do, not their condition or circumstance.

In 2020, COVID-19 caused the Department to urgently adapt to respond to the immediate challenges of the pandemic. The co-design model in the research partnership allowed the ISSR team to similarly adapt the work program, to better support the Department’s COVID-19 response.

As a result of the Partnership, the ISSR-delivered post-implementation review of the Residential Tenancies Response to COVID-19 and review of the Homelessness Response to COVID-19, coupled with the overall evaluation of the Housing Strategy’s First Action Plan, has enabled a more evidence-based assessment of the effectiveness and impact of the Queensland Housing Strategy’s actions and measures.

Having the team from ISSR working closely with the Department in our office has enhanced the partnership approach, producing a productive alignment of in-house content expertise and data sources with rigorous research and evaluation methodologies. The close working relationship has also enabled a highly responsive approach to evaluation, which has been invaluable with the recent changes and challenges resulting from coronavirus.

Brad McCoy, Director, Strategy and Research, Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy

TERM: November 2019 – August 2021

TEAM:
UQ: Professor Tim Reddel (ISSR), Dr. Emily Verstege (ARTD), Dave Porter (ISSR), Dr Laurel Johnson (SEES), Dr Stephanie Wyeth (SEES), Ken Fullerton (ARTD), Dr Elin Charles-Edwards (SEES), Dr Matthew Curry (ISSR), Dr Jack Lam (ISSR), Matthias Kubler (ISSR), Shabbir Ahmad (ISSR) Sally Evans (ARTD) and Suzanne Brangwin (Project Coordinator, ISSR).

Project advisory group: Andrew Hawkins (ARTD), Professor Cameron Parsell (SSS), Professor Rhema Vaithianathan (ISSR), and Professor Mark Western (ISSR).

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