If government is serious about tackling the housing crisis, it must help private investors

The casualties are everywhere. At the extreme, the homeless are increasingly visible on the streets, tent cities spring up in parks, and news items regularly feature people who have fallen out of the housing market.

The response from state governments

There appears to be a widespread acknowledgement that we need more supply, but little seems to have changed in this area.

Instead, the tangible response has tended to focus on a "need" for more social and public housing; and for tenants to gain greater protections.

Both of these are misconceived and make the problem worse. But they do fit well with Labor preoccupations with standardising and centralising in the government the provision of many basic needs.

At the moment, private rentals take up the vast majority of the rental market. According to the census, 10 percent of rental housing is provided by the states and territories and three percent by community housing providers.

To leverage a meaningful increase in the rental housing stock, it is going to have to come from private owners.

This is even more so as the cost of government-provided housing is much higher than private housing.

The Queensland government recently boasted that it would provide 16 one-bedroom units for $487,000 a unit in Caloundra. This is outrageously expensive.

Developers can deliver a 4-bedroom house with a two-car garage, butler's pantry, and media room for around the same amount in a regional area-that's a 25 percent reduction in price per person housed.

The Queensland Council of Social Services claims the state government needs to build 100,000 dwellings.

At the Caloundra price, that would be $49 billion. Total state budget expenditure is only $84 billion this year, and total debt currently stands at $54 billion and will rise to $62 billion next year. The state can't take on that amount of additional housing.