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
Queensland families on brink of homelessness as calls grow for action to address housing crisis
Rachel Riga ABC (No paywall)Single mum Cheyenne Stephensen is days away from being homeless with her two young children. The 25-year-old's rental in Brisbane's outer-western suburb of One Mile at Ipswich is being sold, so she has to move out by next month. Despite having a good rental history, she's been applying for dozens of properties and can't find a new place within budget on her single-parent Centrelink income. "I had a selling agent tell me the owners wanted to sell and I literally cried because we're in the middle of a rental crisis, I can't work and I have two little kids," she said. ... She's now planning to move into her dad's two-bedroom apartment where she'll sleep on a mattress on the floor with her young kids while the property hunt continues. The mum of two's story isn't unique as Queensland grapples with low private and public rental stock, unaffordable house prices and soaring costs of living.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-18/qld-social-housing-constr…
# Australia, Eviction, Public and community housing, Rent, Homelessness, Welfare, Women.Youth homelessness can be overlooked but there is a way out – as Finn’s story proves
Caitlin Fitzsimmons The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Young people leaving home because of family conflict are one of the biggest groups of people in the so-called “hidden homeless” population. Advocates say women and children are the most prominent victims of homelessness because of family violence, but teenagers and young adults escaping violent homes could fly under the radar because they wind up couch-surfing for extended periods. Lex Lutherborrow, the chief executive of Youth Off the Streets, said family breakdown and conflict more broadly – not necessarily including violence – was the biggest driver of youth homelessness.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/youth-homelessness-can-be-ov…
# Australia, Homelessness, Young people.Will home buyers be better off paying stamp duty or property tax?
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)Swapping stamp duty for property tax could save home buyers serious money in the short term, with new modelling showing it could take up to 18 years for the tax to add up to the stamp duty bill for a $1.5 million home. ... Housing policy expert Dr Chris Martin, a senior research fellow at UNSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said stamp duty could discourage people from making otherwise beneficial moves but was not as big a barrier as it was made out to be. While stamp duty was paid by the buyer, evidence showed it comes out of the price received by the vendor, Martin said. He was concerned any savings on upfront costs would be added to a buyer’s spending budget, ultimately resulting in more money for the vendors and putting upward pressure on prices. A property tax could bring underused land to the market and encourage homeowners to move more frequently, which he supported. However, he said he was concerned that reducing upfront costs for investors could lead to more speculation and rental market churn, and he would prefer to see the property tax limited to owner-occupiers. “Having stamp duty puts a little grit in the wheel of transactions, which might actually be a good thing … like an anti-flipping tax,” he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/will-home-buyers-be-better-…
# NSW, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.Lismore’s residents are living in limbo on the frontlines of the climate emergency
Christine Tondorf The Guardian (No paywall)... the same horror stories: emergency services were inundated, there’s a catastrophic housing shortage, families live in tents without water or cooking facilities. The latest SES figures say more than 4,000 houses are uninhabitable and a further 10,849 damaged. ... It’s now been three months since Marcus Bebb was plucked from the roof of his submerged South Lismore home, yet he still feels stranded. Bebb is caught between committing to a rebuild of the family house (so his wife and three teens have a home) and waiting to find out if the NSW government will announce a property buyback. The premier, Dominic Perrottet, has said he will adopt recommendations from the independent inquiry, including proposals for relocating homes. “I’m stuck in limbo,” Bebb says from the caravan he and his wife sleep in at Lismore showground. Their teens have a second van.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/16/lismores-…
# NSW, Climate change, Homelessness, Housing market.Leo’s houseful of treasures were rescued from the street - even his cat
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Leonardo Urbano’s kitten Bella was rescued from a pile of junk that would otherwise have ended up in landfill. Using tips from Facebook pages such as Street Bounty, Urbano found nearly every item in the photo, below, on the street, including his playful cat. [Check the photo and read on]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/leo-found-a-houseful-of-trea…
# NSW, Home.Campground residents battle cold winter as they struggle with homelessness on NSW South Coast
Fatima Olumee ABC (No paywall)A holiday campsite on the New South Wales South Coast has been hit with a surge in residents experiencing homelessness this winter. There are currently about 50 families living at North Head campground in Moruya. Robert Butler, 37, and his family have been living here for the past six months. Mr Butler says it's tough, but he is determined to keep his family safe and warm in these colder months. ... Like many along the South Coast, Mr Butler has struggled to afford rental accommodation for his family. The waitlist for a social housing property is two to 14 years in Eurobodalla Shire, according to the council.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-06-18/homeless-winter-campgroun…
# NSW, Discrimination, Affordable housing, Homelessness, Regional NSW.‘The prices are so much more’: how apartment dwellers get locked into bad power deals
Caitlin Cassidy The Guardian (No paywall)Reuben Acciano wasn’t told he’d have to sign up to his new apartment’s embedded power and gas network until the day he signed the lease. “I was really angry … it wasn’t in the ‘for lease’ ads, [it wasn’t] mentioned by the manager during the walk through,” the Melbourne renter says. “I signed it because of the urgency to vacate my old property, but I would absolutely refuse to go into a new rental situation where I can’t choose my utility providers in the future.” Embedded power networks are common in multi-resident complexes like apartment blocks, caravan parks and some retirement homes. ... NSW ombudsman Janine Young says regulatory frameworks for embedded networks are no longer fit for purpose because of the proliferation of apartment buildings in the past decade. Young said customers within embedded networks weren’t protected by a default market offer, or a cap, on electricity and gas, and were also excluded from consumer protections like rebates and concessions.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/19/the-price…
# Australia, Rent, Strata, Utilities electricity water gas.From a soap opera to tragic reality: the struggle to find a home as a vulnerable single mother
Benita Kolovos The Guardian (No paywall)A parliamentary inquiry into homelessness last year found the key drivers include family violence, the high cost of housing and the lack of social housing stock. Those most at risk of homelessness, it found, are renters. “Simply put, housing costs too much for people on low incomes,” the report says. Sarah Toohey, the chief executive of the Community Housing Industry Association of Victoria, says ... “There’s a reason older women have been the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness in recent years. It’s the accumulation of a lifetime of lower wages, career breaks, putting in less superannuation,” Toohey says. “It all means there’s less to fall back on when there is a separation or if they do lose their jobs later in life.” Toohey is urging the state and federal governments to do more for single parents.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jun/19/from-a-so…
# Australia, Domestic violence, Public and community housing, Rent, Homelessness, Older people, Personal stories, Women.