Housing News Digest
Housing News Digest
The Tenants' Union Housing News Digest compiles our pick of items from all the latest tenancy and housing media, sent once per week, on Thursdays.
Below is the Digest archive from November 2020 onwards. From time to time you will find additional items in the archive that did not make it into the weekly Digest email. Earlier archives are here, where you can also find additional digests by other organisations.
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Archive
Rental properties 3C hotter indoors, survey of Australian tenants over summer finds
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Renters are being forced to live in sweltering conditions, with homes recording inside temperatures 3C hotter than outside across the summer, a new report from Better Renting has revealed. Summer temperatures inside 109 rental homes across the country were tracked from December to February this year, as part of the organisation’s Renter Researchers citizen-science project. The report found renters across Australia were experiencing a median indoor temperature of 25C, meaning homes were above this level 50% of the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/18/australia…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.'I eat or I pay my bills': Americans describe rent burden fears, concerns
Kiara Alfonseca ABC (No paywall)United States: Half of American renters are burdened by the cost of housing, according to a recent Harvard study, officially capturing the grim reality facing renters nationwide. Marianne Smith, a 65-year-old Oklahoma resident, is one of them -- paying about 35% of her income toward rent, she said in an interview with ABC News. "I eat or I pay my bills," Smith told ABC News. "Had I not had family and friends that could afford to just put money in my bank account, I'd be on the streets.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/eat-pay-bills-americans-describe-rent-…
# Hot topic International, .Modular homes were hailed as a solution to housing crises. But the sector is now struggling to scale
Vicky McKeever CNBC (No paywall)The idea of using pre-assembled components in housebuilding is far from new. Modern tech-enabled versions of modular housing promise a faster, more sustainable solution to housing crises, according to experts. But the sector has seen better adoption in some countries compared to others where it has failed to scale — such as the U.K. Prefabrication has existed in many forms, from the defenses used by William the Conqueror in his invasion of England in 1066 to Sears’ mail-order homes in the U.S. in the early 1900s.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/modular-housing-a-century-old-su…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing.The Case Against YIMBYism
Michael Friedrich The New Republic (No paywall)Sonja Trauss, the charismatic founder of the YIMBY movement, recently spoke at a conference of fellow travelers about the importance of supporting small home builders. “Most neighborhoods are still zoned low-density, and so if you’re seeing new housing, it’s going to be small projects,” she said at Austin’s YIMBYtown 2024, a gathering of people who believe that saying “yes in my backyard” to private development will fix America’s housing crisis. Trauss bemoaned the onerous regulations, fees, and paperwork—not to mention meddling homeowners—that make it so hard for small firms to build. Her organization, YIMBY Law, sues cities that create barriers to new construction. “What we’re doing, a lot of it is really for the small developers,” she said, quickly adding, “I mean, and the future residents, of course, guys.” The audience laughed.
https://newrepublic.com/article/179147/case-against-yimbyism-yim…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing, Rent.Economics is in 'disarray', having placed efficiency before ethics and human well-being, says Nobel laureate
Gareth Hutchens ABC (No paywall)Mainstream economics is in "disarray." It ignores the reality of power, it neglects questions of equity, and its policy recommendations can be "little more than a license for plunder." That's the opinion of Angus Deaton, the British-American economist who won the economics version of the Nobel Prize in 2015. The 78-year-old professor says he's recently been changing his mind about views he's long held and it's a "discomfiting process."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-17/nobel-prize-winning-econo…
# International, .Denmark will build social housing in Ukraine according to its standards.
Oksana Lysiuk UBN (No paywall)Denmark created the Ukrainian Housing for All fund to develop and implement affordable rental housing in Ukraine based on the Danish model. It is planned to implement three pilot projects in cities that have suffered the consequences of Russian aggression.
https://ubn-news.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ubn.news/denmark-will-bu…
# International, Rent.Bronx landlord’s $25M unpaid tax bill renews call for stalled transfer program
David Brand Gothamist (No paywall)Tenants of a dilapidated Bronx apartment complex are demanding the city seize the building from an absentee landlord who owes nearly $25 million in property taxes after a roughly decade-long saga over control of the property. Residents of the 49-unit building at 2201-2205 Davidson Ave. said they’re planning to sue the landlord and the city after dealing with serious leaks, mold blooms and months-long elevator outages, despite the building cycling through the city’s various emergency repairs programs. Those who live there said rats still scurry through their apartments and intruders enter through the unlocked front door as they try to wrestle the building out of the landlords’ hands.
https://gothamist.com/news/bronx-landlords-25m-unpaid-tax-bill-r…
# Hot topic International, Rent, Security and safety.How Does Paris Stay Paris? By Pouring Billions Into Public Housing
Thomas Fuller The New York Times (Soft Paywall)The two-bedroom penthouse comes with sweeping views of the Eiffel Tower and just about every other monument across the Paris skyline. The rent, at 600 euros a month, is a steal. Marine Vallery-Radot, 51, the apartment’s tenant, said she cried when she got the call last summer that hers was among 253 lower-income families chosen for a spot in the l’Îlot Saint-Germain, a new public-housing complex a short walk from the Musée d’Orsay, the National Assembly and Napoleon’s tomb.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/03/17/realestate/paris-france-housi…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent.