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
Sammi has a full-time job and paid rent for 15 years. No one will rent her a property
Melissa Heagney-Bayliss The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Sammi Clarke couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and her hair began falling out. After being asked to vacate her rental home as winter hit, the single parent of three applied for almost 20 rental properties in Melbourne’s outer south-east but was knocked back every time.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/sammi-has-a-full-time-job-a…
# Hot topic Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Applying to rent, Families, Health, Home, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Women, Young people.Implementing Trauma-Informed Care in the Proposed National Housing and Homelessness Plan
Chris Hartley Power to Persuade (No paywall)Exploring the pressing need for trauma-informed care in Australia's National Housing and Homelessness Plan, Research Fellow Chris Hartley sheds light on the deep links between trauma and homelessness while advocating for a unified, comprehensive approach to address the issue in line with global best practices.
https://www.powertopersuade.org.au/blog/implementing-trauma-info…
# Australia, Eviction, Federal Government, Health, Homelessness.United we Stand: forty years of co-operative housing
Housing for the Aged Action Group 3CR (No paywall)Fiona and Shane talk to Janet, Mea and Peter from United Housing co-op on their 40th anniversary. We discuss the history of co-operative movements and the importance of participatory tenant-led housing, how things have changed and what the future might hold for this important housing type.
https://www.3cr.org.au/haag/episode/united-we-stand-forty-years-…
# Audio Australia, Rent, Co-operatives and resident-led housing, Housing affordability, Housing market, Older people, Strong communities.Marilyn is fighting a new apartment complex. Others say this attitude is harming housing affordability
Nicola McCaskill SBS (No paywall)NIMBYs – who say "not in my backyard" to new housing developments – are being shouted down by YIMBYs, who say high-density development is the only way to create a sustainable Australia. How is this outlook impacting access to affordable housing?
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/insight/article/nimbys-aim-to-protec…
# Hot topic, Video Australia, Rent, Housing market, Older people, Young people.How bad do Australians have it? Our rental laws versus the world's
David Aidone SBS (No paywall)Even countries with rent controls face price problems. Here's how our rental laws compare to other parts of the world.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/how-bad-do-australians-have-…
# Australia, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Housing market, International.The Greens could seize control on housing, and the PM didn’t see it coming
Tone Wheeler The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)For much of the past 235 years, Australia had a binary vibe: Indigenous v invaders; Labor v Liberal; cities v bush; buyers v renters. But seismic shifts are happening. We are moving to a ternary age. As Noel Pearson so powerfully identified, we are Indigenous, “Anglo” and multicultural. The Greens, teals and independents are a third political force. Between the cities and the bush lies a vast suburbia. Every business is learning to put social and environmental issues with the financial: the “triple bottom line”.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/housing-may-be-the-third…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent, Federal Government, History, Housing market, Young people.Where is the rent ceiling? Housing injustice and the oversupply of landlords
Dan Hogan Overland (No paywall)The problem with feudalism is it can’t be solved with capitalism. Unlike capitalists, landlords don’t offer wages to the tenants they exploit to extract rents. Landlords—as is written in their title—are feudalists whose core business is expanding and conserving rental serfdom.
https://overland.org.au/2023/08/where-is-the-rent-ceiling-housin…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Federal Government, Housing affordability, Housing market, International.Lessons From The U.K.’s Transformative Social Housing System
Roshan Abraham Next City (No paywall)UK: Historian John Boughton explains how the U.K.’s council housing system changed millions of low- and middle-income people’s lives – and how privatization has crippled its power. Conversations about social housing often become polarized around examples with widely differing outcomes: robust and fully funded social housing in places like Vienna, Austria, or on the other hand, the often deteriorating and chronically under-funded public housing in the United States.
https://nextcity.org/features/lessons-from-the-british-transform…
# International, Public and community housing, History, International.