A shortage of housing in Far North Queensland is driving people into precarious accommodation and making it harder for employers to find staff.
But on census night last year, more than 11,500 homes across the greater Cairns region were empty.
That included the Douglas Shire, where the rate of empty homes was 18 per cent, almost double the statewide average.
Mayor Michael Kerr said it was a "really scary figure".
"We have a real struggling workforce at the moment — even if you can find staff, you can't find anywhere for them to live," he said.
Jackson Hills, policy and strategic engagement manager at peak housing and homelessness advocacy group Queensland Shelter, was concerned homes were going empty while the availability of social and affordable housing was in "crisis".
"We've got record low rental vacancy rates at the moment in the rental industry — not just in Cairns, but right across Queensland," he said.
Empty homes are nothing new
The 11,501 unoccupied private dwellings recorded in the census were spread across an area stretching from Cape Tribulation in the north to Cardwell in the south and included the Atherton Tablelands.
About 6,200 of those were in the Cairns urban area.
More than 2,200 were in Innisfail and the Cassowary Coast region, which had an unoccupied rate of 14 per cent — higher than the state average of 9 per cent.
But empty homes are not a new phenomenon in Far North Queensland.
While Cairns's population has grown by almost 30,000 people in the past decade and the number of occupied homes increased by about 10,000 in that time, the 2011 census also recorded 11,071 unoccupied dwellings.
"[Our staff] have come back to us recently showing a great percentage of our rates notices actually go outside of our shire rather than stay in the shire," Mr Kerr said.
Regulation a challenge
The census found that more than one million homes in Australia were vacant.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics says it does its best to accurately classify dwellings based on the census forms and other information it can gather.
"The number [of empty homes] has been similar in some parts of Australia for some time," Mr Hills said.
Mr Hills said local and state governments were beginning to look at ways to regulate short-stay accommodation, particularly as housing became more scarce.
"It's not about penalising anyone that wants to operate in this [short-stay accommodation] space, though," he said.
"It really is about getting the settings right."
Mr Kerr said the City of Brisbane's decision to hike rates on properties used for short-stay accommodation was unlikely to entice home owners back into the private rental market.
But he said it started a conversation that his shire — with about 1,000 empty homes and restaurants and hotels desperate for more staff — should take part in.
"That's a lot of businesses that could potentially have employees in them and certainly make our tourism offering a lot better," Mr Kerr said.
