It seems we’ve created a new sport on the Sunshine Coast – developer bashing.

And judging by the number of letters to the editor and blogs on the subject, if it was set up professionally, there would be no trouble filling the proposed Stockland Stadium at Kawana week after week.

There’s even potential for a second division – property investor bashing – judging by the reaction of tenants to the prospect of landlords passing on the council’s proposed new rates charges to those renting.

Let’s face it, developers are an easy target, aren’t they?

They have more money than all of us, drive cars worth more than our homes and are the main reasons why we are all paying through the nose for housing on the Coast.

But I wonder if we’re all getting a little carried away with this latest sport.

In the past 20 years, I’ve seen plenty of developers make a good buck or two on the Coast.

But I’ve also seen quite a few of them give a lot back to our community – and on an ongoing basis.

And when it comes to housing affordability, some of them are just as passionate as the rest of us about trying to deliver solutions so that the next generation can afford to live here.

You only have to look at the likes of the Reed family to see there are people who give back into the community in a big way.

The Reed Charity Foundation has helped raise money for an accommodation facility at Nambour General Hospital; an orphanage in India; a fully equipped therapy pool for Currimundi Special Pool; the Sunshine Coast Hear and Say Centre; as well as helping Nambour’s Sunshine Coast Children’s Therapy Centre.

The Reed Charity Ball, held last Friday night, is one of the biggest social events of the year – and one of the biggest money spinners for worthy causes.

This year, funds will contribute to Family Challenge – an organisation which is really making a difference in helping parents be better parents – as well as tackling one of the biggest humanitarian crises the world has seen in northern Uganda.

There an estimated 35,000 children were kidnapped and turned into soldiers by the Lord’s Resistance Army. It will take years to lead them back to living normal, meaningful lives.

It’s an enormous job but one that Coast clinical psychologist Dr Robi Sonderegger is meeting head-on with the support of big-hearted business people from the Coast and beyond.

While critics will no doubt say that the development industry should be giving back – after all they are making enough money – the reality is they are there to make money to gain a return for their investors – as well as building their own family’s future.

It is no different from people who work long hours to earn enough to afford to buy an investment property.

They make sacrifices in order to “get ahead” – to try to set up a future for their retirement which will mean they don’t have to rely on the pension – or the taxpayer – to sustain them in their final years.

And yet like developers, they are easily targeted as being ‘greedy’, speculative or pushing up housing prices for the rest of us.

In some cases, that well may be true, but there are plenty of examples where our “greedy” property investors are in fact just mum and dads trying to get ahead, to provide a future for their own kids.

At the end of the day, continual conflict between the so-called haves and have nots achieves little.

If we are to achieve anything on the Sunshine Coast – especially under this big, unwieldly regional council imposed upon us all – we have to work together.

The council needs to be sitting down with the development industry and the wider community to come up with realistic and achievable solutions to the Coast’s housing crisis.

While there will always be developers interested in only making a quick buck, the better ones – those who have been around for a long time on the Coast and have been supporting a lot of community causes along the way – have the will and determination to deliver on housing affordability.

But the council – together with the State Government – needs to provide the environment and the goodwill to give those players a go.

At the end of the day, whether we like it or not, solutions on more affordable housing are far more likely to come out of the brains trust of private industry than from bureaucracies or government organisations.

The new council has made a clear commitment to affordable housing, along with sustainable development.

With proper levels of dialogue between council and industry, there is no reason why both can’t be achieved.

But as a community, we can expect nothing but more strife and division if we foster a “them and us” culture which pits one against another.