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
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.Australia CAN embraces pet-friendly rentals in Tasmania
Vet Practice Magazine (No paywall)Leading animal welfare charity Companion Animal Network Australia (Australia CAN or CANA) is stressing the significant benefits of pet-friendly rentals amid concerns from real estate leaders and property owners in Tasmania about the state government’s pet-inclusive rental reforms. Australia CAN’s Rent with Pets program advocates for Tasmania’s new laws, highlighting the positive social and economic outcomes of embracing pet-friendly housing policies.
https://www.vetpracticemag.com.au/australia-can-embraces-pet-fri…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.QCOSS calling for an end to no grounds evictions
Aimee McVeigh LinkedIn (No paywall)It is time to end unfair rent increases and unfair evictions. Tenants Queensland says that 1.8 million renters are living in approximately 630,000 Queensland households, of which 43% include dependent children. So many Queenslanders are being priced out of the rental market, with people across the state anxious about losing their home.
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/aimee-mcveigh-42835396_it-is-time…
# Hot topic Australia, Eviction, Rent.More children in damp rental homes, figures show
Harriet Agerholm BBC (No paywall)The proportion of private renters with children who are living in damp homes has almost doubled since the pandemic, BBC analysis suggests. The figure has risen from one in 14 households before the pandemic to one in seven in 2022-23, according to the English Housing Survey. One charity said it had been “deluged” with reports of poor housing since the pandemic, with many private renters too afraid of eviction to complain. The National Residential Landlords Association said there were "many challenges facing the sector", but the "vast majority of renters are satisfied".
# Must read International, Rent, Repairs.Private rental sector unlikely to keep up with pensioner demand - retirement commission
Radio NZ (No paywall)The private rental market will not be able to keep up with the demand for rental housing for the many pensioners who will need affordable and accessible homes over the coming decades, says the Retirement Commission. The commission estimates the number of over 65s who are renting could double by 2048, to more than 600,000 superannuiants.New research, based on interviews with more than 700 landlords, shows the private market will not be able to keep up with demand - particularly for accessible rentals.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/524224/private-rental-sector…
# Hot topic International, Rent.Homelessness in England at highest level on record, watchdog says
Patrick Butler and Sally Weale The Guardian (No paywall)Homelessness is at its highest level in England since records began and is expected to worsen, according to a scathing investigation by the public spending watchdog into the last government’s attempts to tackle the problem. The National Audit Office (NAO) said that despite a range of measures introduced under Theresa May’s Conservative administration in 2018, homelessness had soared, with record numbers of families now trapped in unsuitable accommodation.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/jul/23/homeless…
# Hot topic International, .Real Estate Software Aided Price-Fixing “Cartel” Among US Property Companies
Tyler Walicek Truthout (No paywall)The rent is, infamously, too damn high. That refrain has such staying power because the United States’s noxious rent crisis has shown no signs of abating, with rents rising over 30 percent since 2019. All manner of ill effects have resulted; the rapid simultaneous growth of the homelessness crisis is no coincidence. Obfuscations aside, the correlation there is quite direct. But the origins of the rent and housing crisis itself can seem a bit more diffuse: perhaps some combination of shortages driven by lulls in development (though in truth, we don’t lack housing per se so much as we lack affordable, low-income housing).
https://truthout.org/articles/real-estate-software-aided-price-f…
# Hot topic International, .