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
Call for governments to build more lodging homes in bid to alleviate housing crisis
Keane Bourke ABC (No paywall)Robert Andrews's life in a lodging house in Perth is a far cry from his time as a high-flying investment banker in London. When a nearly two-decade career marked by isolation, first-class flights and cocaine addiction came to an end, he started travelling around Europe with $100,000 in his back pocket. But a head injury impaired Mr Andrews's ability to plan for the future, and when the money was gone he had little more than a tent. "I was always deluding myself that somehow something would magically appear," he said. It never did, and he headed back to Perth to rebuild his life.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-05-08/lodging-houses-could-be-k…
# Australia, Boarders and lodgers, Rent.'I'd barely eat one meal a day': Aussies eating out of bins and skipping meals just to afford housing
9 News (No paywall)Research shows Aussies are eating out of bins and skipping meals just to afford housing as the Salvation Army warns it is facing an "unprecedented number" of people reaching out for help. The Salvation Army's major Kylie Collinson said rising inflation, successive interest rate hikes and the growing housing crisis were seeing more people struggle. "We are seeing people who actually have jobs who are saying we need help with out utility bills because our mortgages are so high," Collinson said. "It's unprecedented the number of people who are coming through our centres." The Salvos most recent survey of Australia's most vulnerable found 94 per cent of people were struggling to afford essentials like housing, groceries, medical care and utilities.
https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/salvation-army-aussies…
# Must read Australia, .Their housing estate was demolished. Here’s what happened to the final residents
Cher Tan The Age (Paywall)In 2020 the Walker Street public housing estate in Northcote was demolished. Most of the land – the parts that look out over the Merri Creek – was handed over to developers to be sold, with a section retained for social housing. It was a controversial decision, and one which has now been documented in a new film Things Will Be Different which follows two of the last residents to vacate. When the documentary begins, we meet Najat – a single migrant mother of four whose last name is not given – and William Gwynne. “We were campaigning for two years to try and stop the government from knocking down the estate,” Gwynne tells this masthead. “I’d only been there for three years when I got the notice.”
https://www.theage.com.au/culture/movies/their-housing-estate-wa…
# Australia, Eviction, Public and community housing, Rent.Auditor says public housing growth and renewal program will decrease supply in real terms, limit housing choice
Claire Fenwicke Riotact (No paywall)A new report examining a program designed to grow and improve public housing stock has found it won’t deliver more homes in real terms and could restrict supply in the future. The Auditor-General looked into the ACT Government’s Growing and Renewing Public Housing Program, an eight-year, $860 million program designed to deliver 1400 new public housing homes in the Territory through new builds and redevelopment of older stock. The original program was over five years at a cost of $600 million. The audit examined the management of the program and found that while it will result in a net increase of 400 public housing homes by 2027 (compared to 2019); in real terms, available housing stock will not grow.
https://the-riotact.com/auditor-says-public-housing-growth-and-r…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent.Labor pours $1bn into domestic violence crisis housing and doubles homelessness funding
Josh Butler The Guardian (No paywall)The Albanese government will put an extra $1bn towards crisis accommodation for women and children leaving domestic violence, as part of a multi-billion-dollar housing and homelessness package agreed at national cabinet on Friday. The commonwealth will double its funding for homelessness under the $9.3bn national agreement, while the states will get another $1bn to help speed up construction on infrastructure to support new housing. Separately the federal government will also adjust policy settings around international students in a bid to ease housing shortages, with plans to put new caps on student numbers, require universities to build more campus accommodation and further crackdown on sub-standard education providers or agents.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/may/11/l…
# Hot topic Australia, .The unprecedented destruction of housing in Gaza hasn’t been seen since World War II, the UN says
Edith M. Lederer AP News (No paywall)UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The world hasn’t seen anything like the unprecedented destruction of housing in Gaza since World War II, and it would take at least until 2040 to restore the homes devastated in Israel’s bombing and ground offensive if the conflict ended today, the United Nations reported Thursday. The U.N. assessment said the social and economic impact of the war launched after Hamas’ surprise attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7 has been increasing “in an exponential manner.” It called the level of casualties – 5% of Gaza’s 2.3 million population -- “unprecedented” in such a short time. By mid-April, it said, over 33,000 Palestinians had been killed and more than 80,000 injured. About 7,000 others remain missing, most believed to be buried under the rubble.
https://apnews.com/article/un-report-gaza-destruction-housing-ec…
# Must read, History International, Security and safety.Why fraudsters may be partly behind your high rent (and other problems at home)
Medora Lee USA Today (No paywall)Inflation, undersupply, high demand and exorbitant home prices are often reasons cited for why rents are high. But there’s another few people talk about, rampant fraud. Since the pandemic, rental fraud has exploded nationwide. Nearly all respondents (93.3%) to a survey of members of the National Multifamily Housing Council (NMHC) and the National Apartment Association (NAA) representing 75 leading apartment owners, developers and managers, reported experiencing fraud in the past twelve months, according to the NMHC poll taken between November and January. The fraud occurs when people use false identities to rent an apartment under false pretenses or for criminal purposes, owners and property managers say.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2024/05/05/…
# Hot topic International, Rent.Debunking myths about community housing: What governments and the public should know
Yushu Zhu, Hanan Ali, Meg Holden, Natasha Mhuriro The Conversation (No paywall)Canada’s Housing Plan is pledging an ambitious multilateral approach to build more housing, faster and cheaper, for diverse groups. It includes noteworthy new funding programs and policies to preserve and expand community housing, including social, non-profit and co-operative housing. After decades of homeowner-centred policies, the new Tenant Protection Fund and Renters’ Bill of Rights commit more protections for tenants from excessive rent increases, forced evictions and other threats to their tenancies.
https://theconversation.com/debunking-myths-about-community-hous…
# International, Eviction, Public and community housing, Rent.