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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
Queenslanders call for changes to income eligibility for social housing, with 20,000 homeless
Lawrence Jeffcoat ABC (No paywall)In the back of a station wagon, Jaki Rose prepares for the workday. This isn't where she thought she'd end up. The 58-year-old was a married stay-at-home mum to four, but then in 2019 her relationship broke down. For the past 18 months she's been living out of her car. "I couldn't afford the rent," she says. Driving from car park to car park in Redcliffe, north of Brisbane, Jaki — who works as a chef — has lately been parking up at a local boat ramp. She's one of 20,000 people in Queensland who are homeless.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-02/queensland-housing-stress…
# Must read Australia, Eviction, Public and community housing, Rent.Victorian premier calls for housing summit less than a year after landmark statement
9 News (No paywall)Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has called a housing summit next week for more ideas to solve the crisis, less than a year after Labor's landmark housing statement. After a tense sitting week, opposition leader John Pesutto led a mass-walkout during parliamentary question time today, which left the Greens Party to the floor. The scenes in parliament distracted from what appeared to be an admission that former Premier Daniel Andrews' decade-long housing roadmap isn't up to the job.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/victorian-premier-jacinta-alla…
# Hot topic Australia, .Home for a time
Aishah Kenton and Tessa Flemming ABC (No paywall)During the past year, photographer Aishah Kenton set out to discover what share housing looks like today. What she unearthed was a reinvention of the share house. Not only a home for now, but potentially forever. In 2021, home ownership fell by 14 per cent for Australians aged between 25 and 29 when compared to that same age group in 1971. 2023 marked Flatmates.com.au’s busiest year on record as more people turned to share housing. And as Kenton saw, the share house is increasingly being embraced as an alternative to traditional home ownership and nuclear households.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-04/home-for-a-time-looking-a…
# Must read Australia, Share houses.Tenants unable to make minor changes to rentals in Tasmania despite government plans for law change
Adam Holmes ABC (No paywall)If Jenna Lovell was home alone, she would need to make sure she had a container of water filled up. That is because her condition, hypermobile spectrum disorder, makes it impossible to turn on certain types of taps. "All of the taps had that T-cross four-point turning head on it," Ms Lovell said of her former home in Hobart. "It got to the point where I didn't have enough strength and stability in my hand to be able to turn that style of tap on or off." Her condition became more severe over time, while the taps became progressively stiffer. Even devices that sit over the top of the tap were difficult to use.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-07/tasmania-minor-modificati…
# Must read Australia, Discrimination.'We're family': Queensland caravan park residents face eviction with nowhere to tur
Emily McPherson 9 News (No paywall)For almost 20 years, Belinda Langley and her husband Brett have called a quiet, beachside caravan park on Queensland's Capricorn Coast their home. But now they, and the three other permanent residents at Keppel Sands Caravan Park, are being evicted to make way for a renovation to add a pool and mini-golf course. The small tight-knit group have become more than just neighbours over the years, Langley said. Every morning and afternoon, like clockwork, all five permanent residents gather together for a bit of a yarn.
https://www.9news.com.au/national/were-family-queensland-caravan…
# Must read Australia, Eviction, Land lease communities.Australia must treat housing as a human right, says former Victorian Supreme Court judge
Gareth Hutchens ABC (No paywall)Is Australia's housing situation a crisis? Kevin Bell, a former Victorian Supreme Court justice, says it's worse than a crisis; it's a socio-economic and human rights disaster. "The situation we confront has been oft-called a crisis," he says. "Maybe that was a fair enough description a generation ago. But now it is obviously not just a blip in an otherwise well-functioning system. It is chronic. It has become the system. "That is why we need a stronger word to describe what is unfolding. I have chosen the word 'disaster', but if it continues much longer, it will be a catastrophe."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-04/housing-is-a-human-right-…
# Hot topic Australia, Public and community housing.Housing Deep Dive #1: How important are vacant homes?
One Final Effort (No paywall)Australia doesn’t have a housing supply problem, it has a housing distribution problem. We have hundreds of thousands of houses sitting empty during a rental crisis. If we simply put our empty stock to use, we could clear our social housing waitlists and then some, driving down rents. The problem is that speculators – or landbankers – buy up houses, leave them vacant, watch them appreciate, and bank the capital gains. The above argument is increasingly presented in the Australian housing discourse, to varying degrees.
https://onefinaleffort.com/blog/housing-market-deep-dive-1-vacan…
# Must read Australia, .Will raising the minimum wage affect the property market?
Maria Gil Domain (No paywall)With the start of the new financial year, many Australians received a slight boost to their income as the minimum wage increased by 3.75 per cent. Earlier this year, the Fair Work Commission announced the minimum wage increase to aid with the cost-of-living pressures, which impact about 22 per cent of the workforce, primarily women and casual workers. Housing is a significant factor in the ongoing cost of living crisis, so raising wages seems like an injection of cash that could boost the property and rental market.
https://www-domain-com-au.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.domain.com…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.