Rooming Accommodation and Infrastructure charges

As a town planner working across South-East Queensland, I’ve seen firsthand how nuanced and impactful infrastructure charges can be—particularly when applied to non-traditional housing types like Rooming accommodation. While these developments offer crucial low-cost housing options and support diverse community needs, the current charging regime may not accurately reflect their actual demand on infrastructure which has a huge impact upon the feasibility of a developer pushing ahead with this kind of housing option.

Let’s break it down.

In most Council areas in Queensland, a standard dwelling or allotment attracts an infrastructure charge of approximately $34,000. This figure is designed to cover the additional load a household places on key urban services, including:

• The transport network
• Public parks and land for community facilities
• Stormwater infrastructure
• Trunk infrastructure for water and wastewater

Importantly, the $34,000 charge is based on an average household size of 2.55 people in South-East Queensland (ABS, 2021). That equates to roughly $13,333 per person in infrastructure charges.

Now, let’s compare that with Rooming accommodation.

Infrastructure charges for Rooming accommodation across most Queensland councils are typically:

These figures raise an important question: Are we charging an appropriate amount for Rooming accommodation developments based on their actual infrastructure demand?

In most cases, Rooming accommodation suites and bedrooms are designed—and in many cases restricted—to house one person per room, sometimes two. This is a far cry from the 2.55 people assumed for standard dwellings. If we applied the same per-person logic used in calculating dwelling charges, a single-person Rooming suite should attract an infrastructure charge closer to $13,333—not $23,000.

The disparity is even more stark when you consider that many Rooming accommodation residents:

• Don’t own or operate private vehicles (resulting in lower impact on public roads) – noting that the car parking rates are under half of what is required for a normal Dwelling (in BCC);
• Share the same impervious area to have a mutual demand on stormwater infrastructure;
• Rooming accommodation provides housing for more individuals per square metre of land, meaning each person is using a smaller share of the city’s physical and service infrastructure;
• Residents are less likely to be families with children, meaning reduced pressure on libraries, community halls, and other family-oriented services included in charge calculations; and
• Use shared kitchens and bathrooms (reducing water and wastewater load) and due to shared infrastructure and services within the building, these developments operate more efficiently on a per-person basis — particularly in water, energy, and waste systems.

A Fairer, More Equitable Approach

If we genuinely want to encourage affordable, smaller-scale housing typologies—like Rooming accommodation—we need to ensure that our infrastructure charging frameworks are equitable and evidence-based.

Using the $13,333 per person benchmark as a reference, a fairer rate structure might look something like this:

Lowering infrastructure charges for Rooming accommodation could:

• Incentivise more affordable housing in high-demand areas,
• Encourage infill and adaptive reuse of underutilised sites,
• Reduce red tape for developers focused on social and supported housing.

I recently discussed this issue with Kat Feeney on ABC Radio (listen from 1hr 47min here: ABC Brisbane Afternoons), and it’s clear that the conversation around housing diversity and affordability in Queensland needs to evolve.

Let’s use data—not outdated assumptions—to shape our policy frameworks. If we want to build cities that are inclusive, sustainable, and affordable, aligning infrastructure charges with actual impact is a critical step forward.