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
‘Beyond dire’: how the Queensland and NSW floods are worsening the rental crisis
Conal Hanna The Guardian (No paywall)The loss of thousands of homes means renters will have fewer properties to bid for and they will also be competing against flood-hit owner-occupiers. ... Digby Hughes, senior policy officer at Homelessness NSW, describes the Northern Rivers housing market pre-floods as “beyond dire”. Rental vacancy rates in the region have hovered around 0.6%, according to Leo Patterson Ross, chief executive of the Tenants’ Union of NSW, compared with a healthy natural vacancy rate of somewhere between 3-5%. “Anything under that means there are more tenants than available houses, which puts pressure on prices and people find it hard to find a home. ... Patterson Ross said while affordability had been an issue in Byron Bay for some time, the problem had spread in recent years as locals began relocating to cheaper surrounding areas. “Places like Lismore that were nice places to live, but weren’t right on the beach, hadn’t experienced that same level of desperation until recently,” Patterson Ross said. Based on SQM Research property data, Patterson Ross estimated the Northern Rivers was 2,300 homes short of a healthy tenancy rate ahead of the floods. Now, would-be renters will not only have fewer properties to bid for but be competing against flood-hit owner-occupiers seeking temporary housing, many of whom will be backed with insurance money. [Read on]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/07/beyond-di…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Public and community housing, Rent, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Regional NSW, Short-term holiday letting.Older People, Housing, and International Womens Day
Housing for the Aged Action Group (No paywall)Housing for the Aged Action Groups email bulletin ... International Women's Day (IWD) has always been a significant day for HAAG, representing the struggle for justice and gender equality in our society, workplaces, on the streets and in our homes. But this year IWD takes on added significance. More than 400,000 older women are at risk of homelessness across Australia, we have a government that has ignored the demands ... [read on]
https://mailchi.mp/ec7b089d99d9/older-tenants-voice-summer-editi…
# Must read Australia, Campaigns and law reform, Homelessness, Women.Leaked documents show public housing plan halved
Rick Morton (Paywall)Leaked documents show the NSW government’s plan to sell the Waterloo Estate to developers will deliver less than half the public housing stock initially deemed possible. ... The New South Wales government’s $1 billion plan to sell the Waterloo Estate public housing land in central Sydney will deliver fewer than 100 additional “social” homes over the next five years, ultimately doing nothing to relieve pressure on a waiting list that is currently more than 50,000 households long. A confidential briefing paper to the Perrottet government’s powerful expenditure review committee, obtained by The Saturday Paper, reveals the proposal – which only went on public exhibition on Thursday – has settled on the sale of the high-value inner-city land to developers in return for 3050 new homes, 28 per cent of which will be social. This is less than half of what was initially deemed possible for the project. A further 64 per cent will be ordinary private homes and 8 per cent will be “affordable”. The submission recommends the government approve the three-stage procurement process for the project, which is expected to start in May. Shelter NSW says the current approach to selling off land is “cannibalising” the housing stock. “NSW needs 5000 additional dwellings per year for a decade just to catch up.” … Under the $22 billion “Communities Plus” program, which has been largely scrubbed from government websites but is still referenced internally, the state’s Land and Housing Corporation (LAHC) “redevelops sites throughout metropolitan Sydney and regional NSW into sustainable mixed communities”. The asset recycling strategy is explicitly designed to cost the NSW government nothing and the nominal ratio of social to market homes built in the wake of land sales – 30 per cent and 70 per cent – is configured bluntly to achieve a budget-neutral renewal of old public housing stock. “We will continue to call on the state and Commonwealth governments to make an urgent and widespread investment in social housing acquisition and construction. NSW needs 5000 additional dwellings per year for a decade just to catch up,” its chief executive John Engeler said. (The Saturday Paper)
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/03/05/exc…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Estate renewal, Federal Government, Planning and development, State Government.Housing no longer a crisis – it’s much worse than that
Michael Pascoe The New Daily (No paywall)Wake up, Australia: The usual headlines shouting “housing crisis!” no longer describe the reality – this is a national housing emergency. There effectively is no rental accommodation available in many cities and regional areas, and not much in the rest, with rents consequently soaring. Through wilful neglect and dogma, public and community housing numbers have been frozen for more than a decade while the population and need for it have jumped. Housing prices – the usual attention-grabber – are darkening the aspirations of a generation. A shortage of materials is pushing up prices and delaying the competition of building that is underway while the policy-fuelled pull-forward of work has resulted in approvals crashing, promising problems beyond the current surge as the immigration tap is turned on again. And no government is offering anything like a solution. Oh, there’s the odd Band-Aid and plenty of platitudes, but no government wants to admit the scale of the crisis, no government wants to take responsibility for it, no government is prepared to reverse decades of failed policy to deal with it.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2022/03/05/michael-pascoe-hou…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Affordable housing, Home ownership, Housing market.Public to have a say on future of Waterloo Estate
NSW Department of Planning and Environment (No paywall)Plans for over 3,000 new and improved homes in Sydney’s inner south are part of a proposal for stage one of the Waterloo Estate redevelopment, which is now on exhibition for community feedback. ... The NSW Government has a plan to revamp Waterloo south by changing the rules for how land can be used. The proposed plan will help deliver new social, affordable, and private homes with access to improved community facilities, parks, shops and transport. You can read Michael Koziol's article entitled: '"Get it moving": Final version released for Waterloo estate' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/get-it-moving-government-releases-final-vision-for-waterloo-estate-20220302-p5a14v.html]. Check out the history to this proposal on the 'Redwatch' website at: [http://www.redwatch.org.au/RWA/Waterloo/South]. Also, see this petition from Action for Public Housing at: [https://actionnetwork.org/letters/stop-the-sale-of-600-elizabeth-st-redfern-build-public-housing-instead].
# New policy announcement NSW, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Estate renewal, Home ownership, Planning and development, State Government.Here’s Exactly What To Do If Your Share House Floods
Charles Rushforth (No paywall)As floods rock northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland this week, and with more thunderstorms predicted for the rest of the week, it’s a very good time to start thinking about your options if your share house gets hit by a flood. ... Tenant’s rights websites are critical for knowing your rights as a renter in Australia. The Tenant’s Union NSW and Tenants Queensland both offer specialised fact sheets, detailing your rights as a renter in NSW during emergencies such as floods, as well as tenant advice networks that offer personalised service based on your specific situation. According to Jemima Mowbray, the Policy and Advocacy Manager of Tenants Union NSW, the first rule to follow in a flood event is to “keep yourself safe”. “Leave the premises if you need to if your housing has become unsafe. Don’t worry about things in relation to obligations to landlords. Your obligation is to keep yourself safe.” Mowbray told Junkee. Mowbray says to especially follow the directions of council or emergency personnel if they arrive to evacuate you from your property. “There are a couple of ways you can deal with this as a renter,” Mowbray says. “Get in touch with your landlord or you agent straight away to let them know what’s happened; that the place is unsafe. Then you can talk to them about a rent reduction or rent abatement.” Mowbray says that while landlords aren’t obligated to provide or offer temporary accommodation after a flood, you are eligible for a rent reduction or abatement if you’re displaced from your housing as a result. [Keep reading] (Junkee) Check out the Tenants Union of NSW factsheets: ☔️'Repairs and maintenance' at: [tenants.org.au/factsheet-06-repairs-and-maintenance] and ⚡️'Disaster damage if it is preventing you from staying safe at home' at[tenants.org.au/factsheet-22-disaster-damage].
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Share houses.Everyone In was one of the few housing success stories of this century. But the progress risks being wasted
Jules Birch Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The pandemic has shown that homelessness can be reduced if the right policies are in place. But any progress made then risks being reversed if nothing changes ... So the good news is that the pandemic saw a welcome interruption in the upward trend in homelessness since 2012 ... and by the repeal of the Vagrancy Act. The bad news is that most of the support measures introduced during the pandemic have since been reversed, with the Universal Credit uplift withdrawn, Local Housing Allowance rates refrozen despite rising rents and mounting concern that evictions could rise sharply this year.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/everyone-in-was-…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.‘Face reality’: Don’t build in flood prone areas, resilience boss says
Michael Koziol, Nick O'Malley, Lucy Cormack and Charlotte Grieve The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)The head of the federal government’s disaster recovery agency has called for an end to floodplain development and says inundated homes should not be rebuilt, as insurers brace for one of the biggest flood claim events in Australian history. ... [Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall] said the increasing financial toll of fires, floods, cyclones and hail was evidence of the changing climate. “Regardless of anyone’s views around climate, the facts we can see through insurance claims over the last decade show year-on-year catastrophic losses are being incurred.” Climate Council research director Simon Bradshaw said the increased rainfall delivered by the La Nina system was being supercharged by climate change because the warmer atmosphere could hold more moisture and discharge more energy.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/face-reality-don-t-build-in-…
# Australia, Climate change, Housing market, Local Government.