More than 200 university students move out their apartments in Brisbane so their building can be turned into crisis housing for people experiencing homelessness.
Student accommodation provider Scape Australia was approached by the Queensland Government to see if student apartments left vacant after international travel bans due to coronavirus could be put to better use.
Scape Australia executive director Craig Carracher said they had up to 2,000 empty beds across their six student living apartments and had so far been able to free up 532 beds in the Toowong apartment building. Breaking down the latest news and research to understand how the world is living through an epidemic, this is the ABC's Coronacast podcast."There were some frustrations, there was some misunderstandings about the intent as well, but on the whole we had 280 students in premises at the time and the vast majority have been very supportive and relocated within one week," he said.
"You can imagine in these difficult times if someone knocked on your door and said, 'look we'd like to consider doing something good here and would you be prepared to relocate to a room in another building a couple of hundred metres away?'"If that doorknock came to your home, I think you'd be concerned as well during a pandemic when you've been told to stay home.
All costs associated with moving have been covered with students choosing to either relocate to another student accommodation building, move into residential housing or move back home for the semester break.
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