14.Imagining a secure affordable home for everyone who needs one in Queensland by 2040

Fiona Caniglia, CEO of housing advocacy NFP Q-SHELTER

One of the most urgent and deeply human challenges facing Queensland — and Australia — in 2026: the housing crisis. It’s a crisis touching almost every community. Home ownership is slipping out of reach for younger generations. Rents have surged far beyond wages. Essential workers are being priced out of the very towns and cities they serve. And homelessness is rising at a pace unmatched in decades.

As with many interconnected challenges explored across this series, today’s housing crisis is driven by deeper, system‑level forces. In Queensland and across Australia, these include:

• decades of under investment in social and affordable housing

• population growth and demographic shifts outpacing supply

• speculative investment treating housing as a wealth building asset rather than a human right

• climate driven displacement and mounting insurance stress

• a fragmented planning system spread across multiple agencies without shared long term goals

But what if we applied the imaginative, future‑focused lens used throughout this podcast series and flipped the script of this urgent challenge? Why not ask quite simply: What if we could house everyone who needs a home in Queensland in the decades ahead?

Thankfully, some visionary organisations, policy innovators, and communities have been asking exactly that.

One of the most important and longstanding leaders in this space is Q Shelter —Queensland’s peak body for ending homelessness and unmet housing need. Today, they are doing something rare in Australian public policy: setting a bold, long‑term, whole‑of‑system vision to help ensure every Queenslander has a home by 2045.

Helping me unpack Q Shelter’s role as an exemplar of visionary advocacy — and what it will take to solve Queensland’s housing crisis — is my inspiring guest, Fiona Caniglia, CEO of Q Shelter.

INTERVIEW TALKING POINT SEGMENTS – with approximate time elapsed in minutes.     

GENERIC INTRODUCTION – 0.00 

GUEST FORESHADOWING COMMENTS – 0.36

EPISODE INTRODUCTION – 1.09   

GUEST SELF INTRODUCTION - WORK IN 2026 –4.39

IMAG EXERCISE 1 - TIME TRAVEL TO 2040 - 23.35

IMAG EXERCISE 2 - SIGNALS OF THE FUTURE 2026 – 35.28 

IMAGEXERCISE 3 - ASSERTIVE ACTIONS IN 2026 – 42.43

GUEST WRAP UP COMMENTS – 49.57

HOST REFLECTION AND AUDIENCE INVITATION – 52.53

END OF EPISODE – 57.14

SELECTED RESOURCES LINKED TO INTERVIEW COMMENTS

 Q-Shelter – the organisation’s ⁠portal website⁠

Rental Increase Limitations or rent caps. Here is a well-considered 2024 research-based article. And this shorter 2023 article from The Guardian

The 2032 Olympic Games event to be held in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. A number of researchers including Q-Shelter have pointed to the possible impacts of displacement and homelessness - and the need for well-considered strategic planning in the run up to the event and its aftermath.

 Q-Shelter – the organisation’s portal website

OTHER RESOURCES

Book by Henry David Thoreau – American visionary thinker and early environmentalist -Walden: or Life in the Woods (1854).

CONCEPTS

'Co-benefits' - regarding