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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
UK’s biggest housing association fined over four-year failure to fix window
Patrick Butler The Guardian (No paywall)The UK’s biggest housing association has been fined after a watchdog found that its failure to carry out repairs to a child’s bedroom window for four years left the home mouldy and caused serious illness in the family that lived there. Clarion housing association showed “no urgency” to fix the window, instead leaving it boarded up, despite repeated complaints from the tenant who said the mould caused his asthma to flare up and affected his son’s mental health. In a statement, Clarion housing association said: “We apologise sincerely to the resident and their family in this case. The issue took too long to resolve and our communication was not good enough.”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/13/uks-bigg…
# Must read International, Rent, Repairs, Utilities electricity water gas.'I've put off starting a family due to cost of living'
Christian Fuller BBC (No paywall)A secondary school teacher in Surrey says she is holding off starting a family as she cannot afford to buy her own home. Jade Watson spends £1,320 a month – more than a third of her monthly income – on renting a two-bedroom cottage with her partner just outside the centre of Godalming. “Us putting down roots is being delayed because the cost of living is so expensive,” she said. The Rentstart charity said the rental market was also becoming “increasingly unaffordable” across Surrey.
# Hot topic International, Rent.Record homeless figures in England prompt calls to tackle ‘national scandal’
Aletha Adu The Guardian (No paywall)More than 150,000 children in England are living in temporary accommodation, prompting calls for the government to address what it calls a “national scandal”. Living in temporary accommodation is considered a form of homelessness and can involve people staying in hostel or bed and breakfast (B&B) accommodation. At the end of March there were 151,630 children living in temporary accommodation, an increase of 15% compared with the same time last year and the highest figure since this measure began in 2004.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/08/record-h…
# Must read International, .Biden Invests $100 Million to Fuel Housing Construction
Kriston Capps Bloomberg (No paywall)The White House is announcing $100 million in grants to state and local governments to spur the construction of new housing, one of a host of new administrative actions to boost housing supply. The Biden administration has witnessed record levels of housing production, driven by a pandemic-era boom in apartment buildings. More housing units are under construction now than at any point in half a century — some 60,000 multifamily units were completed in June alone — and rents are stabilizing in some areas as a result.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-13/biden-adminis…
# Hot topic International, .Would building 1.5m homes bring down British house prices?
The Economist (Soft Paywall)Homes in britain have become eye-wateringly expensive. When the Labour Party last won power, in 1997, the ratio of the median house price to the median income in England was 3.5. Now it is 8.3. The share of households aged under 30 who own their own home has fallen from one in five in 1997 to one in eight. On July 24th Sir Keir Starmer, the new prime minister, said that Britain’s failure to build was denying young people “the basic dream of homeownership”.
https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/08/would-building-15m-…
# Hot topic International, Rent.It Can Cost More to Power a House Than Rent It in Pakistan
Bloomberg Live Mint (No paywall)(Bloomberg) -- Electricity bills have outpaced home rental rates for some people in Pakistan, as tariff increases and other reforms to comply with IMF loan conditions spark nationwide protests. The South Asian nation — where nearly half the population survives on less than $4 a day — has seen electricity prices surge 155% since 2021, after the government started hiking industrial and retail rates to bolster its chances of securing loans from the International Monetary Fund.
https://www.livemint.com/news/it-can-cost-more-to-power-a-house-…
# Hot topic International, Utilities electricity water gas.Clare O’Neil promises ‘profound and transformative’ investment to ease housing crisis
Paul Karp The Guardian (No paywall)The new housing and homelessness minister, Clare O’Neil, is “intensely concerned” about the plight of renters and has promised “profound and transformative” investment to alleviate the housing crisis. But with implementation of Labor’s existing $32bn of commitments a priority, O’Neil is offering more continuity than change in her new portfolio, which she inherited from Julie Collins in the July reshuffle. O’Neil said the Albanese government is “not thinking about” amendments to build-to-rent incentives and was non-committal about the prospect of offering new money to help pass the incentives or the Help to Buy shared equity scheme.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/10/c…
# New policy announcement Australia, .This is a pivotal week for Anthony Albanese as he reaches for the reset button
Patricia Karvelas ABC (No paywall)Politics is best played as a game of offence, but for incumbents across the world in what feels like a never-ending cost of living crisis, it has become a battle of defence and managing souring public sentiment. In the United States this is a persistent problem for a declining President Joe Biden, who became so focused on his good set of economic numbers that he failed to adequately acknowledge that what's good on paper doesn't feel good at the grocery store for voters. It's a bit like the weather — when it's 10 degrees on the thermometer, sometimes it feels like 6 degrees. What it feels like becomes our reality.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-12/albanese-pivotal-week-res…
# Hot topic Australia, .