00:00 Lawn's a beautiful spot all year round and we've got a high percentage of holiday rentals
00:07 down here short term.
00:09 It's nothing new as lawn's got a small permanent population of 1,000 that swells to 10,000
00:16 over summer around that.
00:18 And over the years, especially with COVID, we've had, you know, there's been more compounded
00:23 with the lack of short term, sorry, long term affordable accommodation in the town.
00:29 It's a beautiful town, but we're struggling to find for people who've lived here their
00:34 whole life or for many years to find long term affordable accommodation all year round
00:40 and also to entice workers and house them also in the lawn.
00:47 Apologies for interrupting.
00:48 I was going to say the ABC did a search for available rental properties for long term
00:52 rental properties.
00:53 It found just three, two three bedroom houses and a one bed unit.
00:58 Now, is that fairly typical during summer months?
01:02 Definitely in summer months, but not just summer.
01:04 It continues throughout the year.
01:05 So you'll find, you know, there's a lot of short term rentals on there, which, you know,
01:10 a lot of people come down and use their hotel homes down here through summer and different
01:15 weekends, long weekends, too, which is fantastic.
01:17 But it leaves a big hole for to grow the community above the thousand or to get young families
01:23 down to work and live here long term.
01:27 It's definitely it's nothing new that lawns always face that challenge just over the last
01:31 few years.
01:32 It's been really compounded with houses being bought through covid pushing prices up.
01:37 And then obviously the cost of living prices means people are trying to get as much as
01:41 they can for their houses, which unfortunately revolves back to the short term rentals.
01:47 I guess it's illustrated also by the Lawn Hotel recently refurbished, trying to find
01:51 workers.
01:52 They come there, but they just can't find anywhere to live.
01:54 So where are they staying?
01:56 Yeah, so it's not just a lawn hotel.
01:59 We've got some really great things reopening up like the Grand Pacific's being done, the
02:02 lawn theatre and a few other great businesses.
02:04 So it comes into effect that we want the town to really grow and be fantastic, but we need
02:10 to house people there.
02:11 So at the moment, they're into the backpackers.
02:15 The local backpackers has been reverted into a staffer comm for the Lawn Hotel, which which
02:21 takes a bit of pressure off the town.
02:22 But then it creates that issue that we don't have any other accommodation for small businesses
02:27 like myself to entice our workers to stay.
02:31 So it's we've got work to the local Great East Coast Committee down here to get some
02:37 affordable tent sites, which has been great through the peak season, October through to
02:42 Easter.
02:43 Again, it's great for them, backpackers that can come and stay here, but it doesn't fix
02:48 if people want something a bit more permanent and long term.
02:52 So we've got the short term accommodation slightly fixed, but we still need a lot more.
02:56 But it's the long term accommodation that we really want down here for people to actually
03:02 stay and make a life here.
03:03 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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