The Courier Mail reports today the mining industry has affected house prices in some towns to such a degree that it costs around nine times as much to live in the rural town of Dysart as it does to live in southwest Brisbane.

The high cost of housing and huge demand from mining workers has even seen instances of “hot-bedding”, which means sharing a room with someone on an alternative shift.

The cost is driving many companies into the controversial fly-in, fly-out schemes or putting workers in temporary camps, causing huge social problems in some towns.

Young people without mining jobs in towns like Moranbah are reportedly forced to live in caravans - often with five or six people together - because they cannot afford the $1200 a week rentals. 

The Real Estate Institute of Queensland found Dysart had the state’s highest median rent of $1200 a week for a house, but this was collated over the average rents for all houses.

Current listings show a four-bedroom house in Dysart can fetch as much as $1800 a week in rent while the median rent for homes in suburban Forest Lake, in Brisbane’s south west, is $362 a week.

The REIQ said state-wide market conditions over the past 12 months resulted in better returns for investors because house prices had generally softened and rents remained stable.

“The natural disasters in Queensland … no doubt impacted buyer confidence, however February saw an increase in the number of dwellings financed across all buyer segments,” REIQ chairman Pamela Bennett said.

The union representing coalminers, the CFMEU, has campaigned heavily on the destruction of mining communities through fly-in, fly-out operations. Yesterday it described the rents as a disgrace.

CFMEU state secretary Jim Valery said it was not only miners affected because towns could not attract council workers, emergency workers or even bank staff because they could not afford rents.