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
Labor’s social housing levy faces upper house hurdle
Josh Gordon The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)he Andrews government’s proposed social housing tax on property developers could face a rocky passage through State Parliament, with the opposition vowing to vote against the $800 million annual contribution in the upper house. Under the overhaul, all newly built developments with three or more dwellings or lot subdivisions would hand over 1.75 per cent of the expected project value, with the cash used to fund an extra 1700 social and affordable homes each year.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/labor-s-social-housing-…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Housing market, Planning and development, Tax.House prices and rents surge in regional Australia amid influx of arrivals from cities
Natasha May The Guardian (No paywall)Regional Australia has experienced record levels of growth across housing and rental markets in the last 12 months, according to a new report, as locals say the rising demand has priced them out. NAB’s Regional Migration Impacts on Property Report, released on Tuesday, found “the continued flow of new arrivals into regional areas has placed an unprecedented level of upward pressure on property values, with many locations now experiencing dwelling values at new record levels”. House prices rose most sharply in the southern highlands and Shoalhaven region in New South Wales, with an increase of over 38% in the 12 months to the end of January 2022, according to the report. ... The report also showed that on a local government area basis, the Byron shire on the NSW north coast had the highest median house value of any regional LGA, with an average price of nearly $1,850,000, an increase of 30.2%. Houses in the Kiama LGA, also in NSW, recorded the greatest increase, with a 43.9% uplift in the past 12 months. “High-population coastal centres close to capital cities continue to be the main destinations for capital-city dwellers making a regional move,” the report said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/feb/22/house-pri…
# Australia, Rent, Housing market, Regional NSW.Sydney property development with no sewerage connection turns dream into nightmare
Catherine Hanrahan and Kamin Gock ABC (No paywall)t started as a dream but aspiring home owners Matt Pyatt and Michael Buckingham say it has become a nightmare. The couple bought a land package as part of a new development in Sydney's south-west in February 2020. More than two years later, the block remains vacant. The reason? Sewerage.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-23/sewerage-connection-delay…
# NSW, Utilities electricity water gas, Home ownership, Housing market.494 applicants on public housing wait list vie for one of 16 new homes in Katherine
Roxanne Fitzgerald ABC (No paywall)In two weeks, Gwenda Mace Woodroffe won't have anywhere to live. For the past six years, the Rembarranga woman from the remote NT community of Beswick has been on the move, carting her possessions between short-stay accommodation services and the overcrowded homes of family members. "Sometimes I have to sleep in the long grass," Ms Woodroffe said. Ms Woodroffe, who has a chronic illness and issues with her eyesight after domestic assaults, added her name to Katherine's public housing lottery six years ago to be closer to the hospital. She hasn't heard anything since. More than 490 applicants are on a waiting list for a house in the Katherine region alone, according to the NT government.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-22/katherines-hundreds-of-ho…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Homelessness, Personal stories, Women.Second chance for Noongar Elder facing ‘no fault’ eviction
Kearyn Cox SBS (No paywall)A Perth grandmother is relieved after her eviction was stayed just 24 hours before she would have been forced from her home in supported accommodation. ... The Noongar grandmother has lived in a small unit owned by Mandjah Boodjah Aboriginal Corporation in Perth’s southern suburb of Beaconsfield for the past two years. Mandjah Boodjah is supposed to provide safe and culturally appropriate affordable housing for up to twenty Elders in the community. ... James Spinks, a lawyer for a Perth Aboriginal advocacy centre, says 'no grounds evictions' put tenants in a difficult position. “It’s quite a strict rule, the only leeway it gives is that it does give a tenant an extra 60 days to find a place," he told The Point. "But in a market like today's market, 60 days is neither here nor there and often tenants have nowhere to go." (The Point)
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/2022/02/22/second-chance-noo…
# Australia, Aboriginal renters, Eviction, No-grounds evictions.Canada’s housing crisis will not be solved by building more of the same
Ipek Tureli The Conversation (No paywall)Canada’s “housing bubble,” along with increasing sale and rental prices, has led to calls for building more housing. However, the housing crisis will not be solved by building more of the same like condos and suburban homes for single families. But alternatives to housing-as-commodity could offer a partial solution to the bubble, and housing inequality more broadly. One underlying reason for calls for more housing supply is the notion of private property and its historical connection to citizenship. Early Canadian legislation divided and granted land to white settlers as private property to encourage occupation. Another reason is financial; home ownership is seen as a means of wealth accumulation, and government policies and actions — like low mortgage interest rates — fuel this vision. Neoliberalization since the 1980s and financialization since the 2000s have created the current conditions of housing inequality in Canadian cities and beyond.
https://theconversation.com/canadas-housing-crisis-will-not-be-s…
# International, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market.‘Catastrophic’ fire test in 2002 meant government should have had ‘no doubt at all’ that Grenfell cladding should not be used
Peter Apps Inside Housing (Paywall)The polyethylene-cored aluminium composite material (ACM) cladding was subjected to a government-funded test in summer 2001 and failed horrendously, with 20-metre flames appearing after just five minutes. The results of this test were delivered to officials in September 2002, but no warning was issued to the industry and a fire standard which appeared to permit its use was not removed from official guidance, despite what was described today as “an immediate and present risk to life”. It means the government knew of the risks of ACM 15 years before the fire at Grenfell Tower killed 72 people, and 12 years before the decision to clad its walls in the material. The inquiry has already established that the cladding panels were the “primary cause” of the rapid fire spread.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/home/home/catastrophic-fire-test…
# International, Asbestos, lead, hazardous materials, Housing market.‘There will be another shock’: RBA warns about big mortgages as rates rise
Shane Wright and Jennifer Duke The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Reserve Bank governor Philip Lowe is warning home buyers with big mortgages will be a weak spot in the economy when rates are lifted above record low levels as the nation’s biggest lender increases fixed rate mortgages. ... Australian households are among the most heavily indebted in the world, with debt to household disposable income at a record high of 140.5 per cent.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/there-will-be-another-sh…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.