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
Ukraine Airbnbs receive bookings in effort to get money to residents
Mark Sweney The Guardian (No paywall)Members of the public are paying for Airbnb rentals in Ukraine to help get money to residents who are facing extreme financial hardship because of the Russian invasion. The home rental platform has already moved to offer free housing to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, but members of the public have come up with a novel way to financially help those who either intend to remain or are trapped in the country owing to the conflict. One couple who made a booking for 3-10 March in Kyiv, posted confirmation on Twitter and wrote: “Hello Maria, my wife and I have just booked your apartment for one week, but of course we will not be visiting. This is just so you can receive some money.” ... On Monday Airbnb pledged to offer free housing to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. The spokesperson said the company had received an “overwhelming response” to the initiative, with more than 260,000 visitors so far to a dedicated page where it is possible sign up to be a host or donate. [Brian Chesky, its chief executive and co-founder,]said that in the last decade the company had provided housing free of charge to 54,000 refugees globally in conjunction with its hosts, most recently in relation to last year’s crisis in Afghanistan.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/03/ukraine-airbn…
# International, International, Short-term holiday letting.The rental market was tight before the south-east Queensland flood — what now for people who can't return home?
Emilie Gramenz ABC (No paywall)"The house is probably a write-off because the walls are all swollen, the kitchen's completely destroyed, and bathrooms," [Cass Thurston] said. When the ABC met Cass during the clean-up effort in Brisbane's south-west, she acknowledged that she and "thousands of others" would need to look for a new rental property. But a few days later, after considering the stress of trying to find somewhere in an extremely tight rental market, she and her family — who were already building a new home in a different suburb — have instead decided to spend the next year or so living with family. "There's people worse off than us right now, who don't have places to go and they're living out of evacuation centres — and my heart goes out to them," she said. Even before the floods there was a crush on rentals across Queensland amid a booming property market. Tenants Queensland CEO Penny Carr admits it is a major concern. "We've had quite a lot of calls already from people who either have to temporarily, or maybe in the longer term, have to get out of their property and they're struggling to find somewhere," she said. "It's pretty grim for people out there at the moment."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-05/qld-south-east-queensland…
# Australia, Rent, Homelessness.‘It’s all going up’: Workers face rental stress in key marginal seats
James Massola and Rachael Dexter The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Surging rents and flat wages are forcing critical childcare, aged care and supermarket workers deeper into rental stress in four marginal seats that will be critical to the outcome of the next election. New research from the “Everybody’s Home” campaign group has found that workers in the seats of Flinders (Victoria), Gilmore (NSW), Bass (Tasmania) and Longman (Queensland) have seen the share of their income spent on rent rise by between five and 13 per cent between February 2021 and February 2022. ... Everybody’s Home national spokeswoman Kate Colvin said aged care, childcare and supermarket workers were being “pushed to the brink of homelessness and poverty”.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-all-going-up-worker…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Homelessness, Housing market, Regional NSW, Work, employment.Houston Is Hailed as a National Success for Fighting Homelessness. But the Reality Isn’t Quite as Rosy.
Sam Russek (No paywall)From the United States ... In recent years, Houston has been trumpeted as the gold standard for its brand of “housing first” homeless services. Supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this program and others like it race to house people before pairing them with necessary treatments. This has been a complete shift for the city over the past decade. In 2011, HUD dinged Houston as a “priority community” after homelessness increased by 25 percent in one year. ... Today, CFTH boasts a 54 percent decrease in homelessness over the past 10 years as of 2021 (from over 8,500 to 3,055 people), and representatives from across the country—and even London, according to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office —have made the pilgrimage to the city to study how it did it. On January 26, the mayor doubled down on the approach, announcing a $100 million increase in funds for the Communitywide Covid-19 Housing Program, or CCHP, on top of the original $65 million charter that housed more than 7,000 people from October 2020 to December 2021. ... But [simple overall stats don’t show the truth of the housing crisis and] if you talk to people who are unhoused in Houston, or are working to help people find stable housing, the picture is far less rosy. (New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/article/165368/houston-homeless-populati…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing market.Second homes in Wales could face 300% council tax hikes
BBC (No paywall)Some second home owners in Wales could pay four times their current level of council tax from next year, the Welsh government has announced. Currently councils can charge a second home premium of up to 100% but that will increase to 300% from April 2023. The move, included in a Labour-Plaid Cymru cooperation agreement, is part of efforts to make it easier for people to afford homes where they grew up. Also, read Stephen Delahunty's article on the same issue in 'Inside Housing'. He writes: 'Councils will be able to apply different premiums to second homes and long-term empty dwellings, depending what is appropriate for their local circumstances. The Welsh government is encouraging councils to use the additional funding to improve the supply of affordable housing.' Go to: [https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/second-home-owners-in-wales-face-huge-tax-hike-under-new-plans-74440]
# International, Affordable housing, Home ownership, Housing market, Tax.Behind the Line: Poverty and disadvantage in Australia 2022
Alan Duncan (No paywall)This report, the ninth in the Focus on the States series, provides the latest examination of the prevalence of poverty within Australia, how this has changed over time, and which groups in society face the greatest risks of financial hardship and material deprivation. ... Open the link to the publication. It reads (p 26): 'Our research finds that nearly a quarter of renters (23.6%) fell below the poverty line in 2020, an increase of 2.2 percentage points in two years ... Financially vulnerable people are forced to make spending decisions on really tight margins with little or no discretionary income, and that’s exactly the situation facing the 1.5 million renters across the country who are experiencing poverty. It is not unusual for the poorest families to have to survive on less than $150 per week once housing costs have been paid – that’s only $21.50 a day.' (Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre)
https://bcec.edu.au/publications/behind-the-line-poverty-and-dis…
# Research alert Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Families, Housing market.ACTCOSS calls on Housing ACT to put ‘heartless’ relocation process on hold
Ian Bushnell (No paywall)The ACT’s peak welfare group has blasted Housing ACT’s new tenant relocation push as heartless. They have called on the government to pause the process and genuinely engage with the more than 300 households that received letters last week saying they would have to move from their current homes. The ACT Council of Social Services said the letters advising tenants they would have to move because their homes had been earmarked for sale or redevelopment as part of the public housing renewal program came out of the blue for many of them.
https://the-riotact.com/actcoss-calls-on-housing-act-to-put-hear…
# Australia, Eviction, Public and community housing, State Government.Housing crisis worsening on the Fleurieu Peninsula as homes sold and rent hiked, leaving people homeless
Alice Dempster ABC (No paywall)A critical lack of housing on South Australia's Fleurieu Peninsula is leaving people who have been pushed out of rental properties sleeping in cars and hopping between caravan parks, residents say. Victor Harbor's Sue Duncan, 62, is one such person, facing eviction from her rental property at the end of March when her landlord moves back from overseas and into the home. "We're really sort of stuck as to where [we go], because my housemate has been to a couple of places for rent and there's been so many people lined up, probably about 30, 40 people lined up for the same house," Ms Duncan said. "It's crazy, and the prices, I think one house was $520 a week. "Who can afford that, unless you're getting some astronomical amount of pay?" Ms Duncan, who works in the disability sector, said the thought of having nowhere to go was hard, especially as an older person.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-04/fleurieu-peninsula-housin…
# Australia, Eviction, Rent, Homelessness, Housing market, Older people, Women.