The STA Debacle

Policy without evidence

Noosa Council – or more precisely, the anti-visitor elements within it – has doubled down in moving to amend the Noosa Plan in a way that will effectively ban expansion of short term accommodation in the Shire.

The majority of Councillors will do this by blocking enterprise in a market sector notoriously vulnerable to major economic shocks, such as Noosa experienced when the global financial crisis crushed tourism and kept the property market depressed for 10 years.

Overzealous councillors commanding a majority of votes are about to set up Noosa for a dreadful hiding next time the economy tumbles. There is a better way than the one being foisted upon the Shire by these impulsive politicians.

In July 2021, after several months in which the Council consistently approved applications for short term accommodation (STA) in medium and high density residential zones, assessment staff did a sudden about-face and began recommending that such applications be rejected.

Their justification for the change was as mysterious as it was unexpected. Without warning, Council staff decided to enforce a section of the 2020 Noosa Plan which dictates that “visitor accommodation is not to be located in areas which are predominantly permanent residential dwellings”.

The Noosa Plan does not define ‘predominantly’, but staff worked around this by adopting an estimate by Unitywater that, on average, “23 percent of dwellings within the coastal areas are being used for the purpose of short-term accommodation”.

This untested 23 percent benchmark, of uncertain derivation and reliability, was then arbitrarily applied by staff to each application.

Recommendations to refuse STA applications began to flow to Council’s decision-making meetings.

A number of Councillors, without questioning the basis of the staff’s assessment, then began to reject all or most applications.

It suited them to have a justification, however obscure, that matched their perception of Noosa as a place overrun by visitors.

So, on the basis of spurious reasoning and no substantive evidence, began the rejection of many applications to provide short term accommodation.

Previously, in 2019, in a draft of the Noosa Plan modified in response to public agitation, staff had proposed that short term accommodation be allowed for all residential dwellings – units, duplexes and houses – whether in low, medium or high density residential zones.

The modification was for a straightforward, flexible and publicly approved scheme.

But a majority of councillors rejected the staff’s position, deciding instead that in low density areas short term accommodation would be defined as an ‘inconsistent use’ of whole houses and that applications for such use would be ‘impact assessable’, and therefore likely to be rejected.

I dissented from this change that seemed to owe more to bias against visitors than good sense.

‘Inconsistent’ means what it says – that short term accommodation in low density zones is regarded as incompatible with the character of the area and unlikely to be approved.

‘Impact assessable’ means each application must be formally assessed to determine its impact on the neighbourhood.

In addition, applicants have to pay a $9,000 application fee and, in a submission, prove that their STA property will not have a negative impact.

In medium and high density zones, the plan defines short term accommodation as ‘consistent’ but still requires applications to be ‘impact assessable’. This requires a lower application fee of around $3,000 but it can still be rejected even though the notion of ‘consistency’ makes approval more likely.

Deliberately, STA applications were made expensive and complex, meaning applicants are likely to require the services of a consultant planner, and even a lawyer.

And even then, after the money has been spent and a thorough case assembled, there is no guarantee approval will follow from a Council dominated by Councillors who believe that visitors are detrimental to many communities.

It is hard to conceive that a more hostile process could be devised.

But it was not until July 2021 that staff and a majority of Councillors began to reject applications in medium and high density zones. This immediately created concern in the community and within the minority group of Councillors which includes the Mayor, as it was clear the staff recommendations were not evidence based.

After much debate, Councillors decided to seek both empirical data and an updated Housing Needs Assessment before deciding whether to amend the Noosa Plan.

The provision of such evidence had previously been mandated by the Planning Minister as a condition for approving the plan, but this had been ignored.

However when staff eventually supply this information to Councillors, there is no guarantee that limitations on STA applications will be eased; indeed it is possible they may be made more severe.

Short term accommodation has become yet another arena for winding back visitor numbers to Noosa without visitor numbers being substantiated as a real problem.

There is a long history in Noosa of objection to tourism and visitors and, associated with this in more recent times, fearmongering and hyperbole about short term letting “taking over” the Shire accompanied by detrimental gibes about the kinds of people who short term let. These debates, almost always evidence free, also occur at council meetings and in other public forums.

Online platforms like Airbnb and Stayz are regarded as malign, and property owners who want to short term let characterised as little better than interlopers. Emotional language drives out rational discourse using catchphrases like ‘housing crisis’, ‘rental crisis’, ‘tsunami of visitors’, ‘explosion of STAs’, ‘loved to death’, ‘ruined amenity’, ‘party houses’ and ‘community fabric destroyed’.

There are plenty of anecdotes but little or no evidence to support such extreme contentions. Short term accommodation has also become a proxy in Noosa’s tiresome culture wars in which a self-styled group of ‘guardians’ seek to exert control over visitors, newcomers, most business people, wealthy retirees, in fact anybody except themselves.

Impeding the economy

Noosa Council will take bad policy a big step further if it approves a foreshadowed amendment to the Noosa Plan which will essentially not allow approvals for additional short term accommodation (STA) in the Shire.

Devised under the previous Wellington Council, the plan had not been ratified then because of State Government concern about some of its elements. I too had been concerned about the harsh limitations proposed on short term accommodation and had voted against adopting the plan. But with the 2020 election out of the way, the Noosa Plan returned to
the Council for adoption.

With similar concerns to mine, the newly elected Mayor Cr Clare Stewart and Cr Amelia Lorentson voted against the Plan, but continuing Councillors, who retained a majority in the Council, voted to approve the plan.

However, a proviso from the State Planning Minister prevailed – that, because there had been no economic impact assessment of the proposed changes to STA, over a two year period the Council was required to monitor and provide “a detailed analysis…[including] annual comparison data, consider the economic and social benefits of the current situation [and] forecast the potential long-term impacts of short-term accommodation across the residential zones”.

In the first 12 months after the Noosa Plan was adopted, assessment staff consistently recommended, and Councillors approved, STA applications in medium and high density zones. Then unexpectedly in July 2021, staff began recommending refusal and Councillors began, but not unanimously, to followed suit by rejecting some applications but without the “detailed analysis” sought by the Minister.

When the Mayor and Crs Lorentson and Finzel raised this inconsistency, and possible breach of a ministerial requirement, the Council put changes to STA on hold until they had received credible data and an updated Housing Needs Assessment.

Noosa’s beautiful environment and relaxed lifestyle make it a magnet for retirees and visitors. It’s not surprising that tourism, hospitality, property and construction comprise the bulk of the Shire’s economy.

Since Noosa Council was re-established in 2014, Councillors have been elected promising to ‘diversify the economy’ and, when they fail to do this, make the same promise next time. But this is empty rhetoric because past Councils have consistently failed to encourage and facilitate diversification.

Indeed, the Council has a reputation for making commercial initiatives difficult to effect.
One of the Council’s major attempts to ‘diversify’ was to establish a digital IT hub which it said would be profitable and spin off digital enterprise in the Shire. Instead – after a demonstration of favouritism, poor planning and lack of business knowhow – the hub became a cost centre and there is no sign that the Shire will ever develop its own Silicon Valley.

Indeed, it seems some councillors lack an understanding of the real meaning of economic diversification.

At a recent Council meeting, Cr Tom Wegener said he would vote to reject an STA application in the interests of diversifying the economy by retaining the property as a home for a company executive, who presumably might lease it for long term occupancy.

In 2008 a combination of the Global Financial Crisis and strong Australian dollar battered tourism and left the Noosa property market on its knees, a situation that took nearly 10 years to alleviate.

In 2021, the Covid pandemic has had the opposite effect on Noosa, which at the time of writing had been mostly unaffected by lockdowns and, as an open ‘safe haven’ and with attractive property prices compared with the big cities, attracted visitation and inward migration.

Property and rental prices have risen steeply and vacancy rates are very low. At a macro level, the South East Queensland Regional Plan and Noosa Plan constrain the residential footprint and limit housing development, likely forcing up property prices for some time to come.

The truth is that short term accommodation, effectively managed and not blighted by unnecessarily restrictive rules, could be an important part of offering the Noosa economy more adaptability and flexibility in dealing with the cyclical housing and tourism markets.
This would add to the Shire’s now precarious economic resilience. But this opportunity to strengthen the local economy seems to be neither understood nor valued by most Councillors.

Cumbersome, costly and unfair

In 2020, Mayor Stewart successfully moved that the Council initiate action to enable affordable housing for lower income people. But in the political pressure cooker, the targeted “affordable housing crisis” morphed into a generic “housing crisis”, of which there is no evidence, but is a term frequently used by some Councillors to argue against expanding short term accommodation.

The shortage of affordable housing will not be addressed by limiting short term accommodation. Quite simply, the prices and rentals of most of these properties is beyond the means of low income people.

Banning STAs in expensive coastal areas will not help house low socio-economic groups. Issues of housing affordability and scarcity of affordable housing are problems at the lower, not the upper, end of the property market. Limiting short term accommodation will not solve this problem and assertions that it will are ill-informed or cynical.

Led by Mayor Stewart, Noosa Council has begun to take steps to address the scarcity of affordable housing, which particularly affects the workers on which Noosa relies, the homeless, older single women and victims of domestic violence. Addressing this issue will take many years before the real affordable housing crisis is alleviated.

Objectors to short stay accommodation also often blame it for traffic congestion and the cost of maintaining public infrastructure in the Shire. This year Noosa Council took steps to have STA owners, including resorts, pay more towards infrastructure through higher rates and a levy.

But the real causes of traffic congestion have more to do with the lack of Council action to establish park and ride stations on traffic corridors, shuttle buses to replace cars in heavy traffic areas and bicycle pathways to encourage an alternative form of transport in a place ideally suited to bike riding. Limiting short stays will make no difference to Noosa’s growing traffic problems. The argument is just a red herring.

Listening to opponents of STA, you’d swear that guests are the visitors from hell. Anecdotes abound of constant deafening parties, overspilling visitor hordes, rubbish dumped wantonly and parked cars blocking streets.

There’s no doubt some neighbours have bad experiences. But Council debates never moved beyond anecdotes to provide substantive evidence that the problems are widespread. Meanwhile Council local laws officers receive frequent complaints about chronically ill-behaved owner-occupiers and permanent tenants.

The bad neighbour is a rules-enforcement issue for relevant Council staff and the Police. The across-the-board solution to the problem with some short term visitors, long term tenants and permanent residents is a properly resourced complaints and monitoring process to protect neighbourhood amenity.

Bad neighbours are not an STA issue; they are being used as an excuse.

In summary, restricting short term accommodation is not an answer that will diversify the Noosa economy, nor will it fix housing unaffordability, remove traffic congestion or ensure neighbourhood amenity. Each of these is an issue to be addressed in its own right.
Using the planning scheme to regulate short term accommodation is cumbersome, costly and unfair, and it will entrench Council approvals in perpetuity, since these are permanently attached to properties.

STAs seem likely to cause distortions in the market because some properties will have existing use rights, some will have approvals, and many will have neither.

A more nimble approach is epitomised in Barcelona, Spain, where the city council manages short term letting not by applications for land use, but through a permit and quota system to control the number of short term rentals.

In some precincts the number of permits can remain the same, in others they can increase and in others they can decrease – settings which the council can change as conditions change.

Adopting a more agile STA framework would allow Noosa Shire to stay in tune with changing circumstances and not be nailed down by a rigid scheme that seems purpose-designed to advantage some property owners, disadvantage others and do nothing for the Noosa economy.

Neither will the current approach solve any of the matters claimed by the opponents of short term accommodation, who appear mostly motivated by an antipathy to visitation and tourism in general.