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
‘Now you’re evicting them?’: Victorians in ‘life-changing’ housing scheme face homelessness again
Stephanie Convery and Benita Kolovos The Guardian (No paywall)Hundreds of participants in a “life-changing” Victorian housing program designed to permanently end rough sleeping face the prospect of returning to homelessness after being served with eviction notices.
From Homelessness to a Home (H2H) was launched by the state government in July 2020 to widespread acclaim from the housing sector. An extension of emergency measures to accommodate Melbourne’s rough sleepers in hotels during the city’s Covid-19 lockdowns, the program was allocated $202m to help move about 1,845 households and families out of homelessness.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/mar/06/now-youre…
# Australia, Eviction, Homelessness, State Government.The Growing Risk of Eviction in the Suburbs
Devin Q. Rutan, Peter Hepburn, and Matthew Desmond Eviction Lab (No paywall)American suburbs have changed dramatically over the last several decades. Back in the 1960s and ‘70s, suburbs were largely white, middle-class spaces. Over time, they’ve become poorer, more diverse, and—as we show in a new study published in RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences—the site of a growing share of eviction cases.
We used millions of court records from across the country to track how common eviction cases are in cities and their suburbs, and how that has changed over time. Building on previous work, we focused on 74 of the largest metro areas in the U.S.—cities and their surrounding suburbs—where we had reliable data covering the years 2000 to 2016. Our sample included metro areas across the country, from Boston to Phoenix, Pensacola, FL to Olympia, WA.
https://evictionlab.org/growing-risk-of-suburban-eviction/?s=31
# Research alert International, Eviction, Tribunal NCAT.US teachers grapple with a growing housing crisis: ‘We can’t afford rent’
Edwin Rios The Guardian (No paywall)In her first year as a student teacher, Gina Gray also delivered groceries for Instacart. She was driven to give back to the city that raised her, but also needed help with the bills and rent.
Now Gray, a Black English teacher at Middle College high school in Los Angeles, takes on additional work in the district such as teaching summer and Saturday schooling and commutes one hour each day from her rental in Norwalk-La Mirada, a district near Los Angeles.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/02/us-teachers-cali…
# International, Housing affordability, Work, employment, Young people.Eviction applications spike in Ontario as rents soar, vacancies dwindle
Matt Lundy Globe and Mail (No paywall)As Ontario faces a chronic shortage of housing and rapidly climbing rents, landlords in the province are increasingly trying to evict their tenants and take possession of those rental units.
In 2022, the Landlord and Tenant Board, which adjudicates rental-housing disputes in the province, received more than 5,550 eviction applications in which landlords sought units for themselves, family members or new buyers. That was an increase of 41 per cent from 2019, according to numbers provided by the province to The Globe and Mail.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-housing-evictio…
# International, Eviction, Landlords and agents.‘Extending the eviction ban is a doomsday scenario for me’: Renters and landlords on the ban
Nathan Jones Irish Times (No paywall)Renters have cited fears of homelessness in calling on the Government to extend the ban on evictions in advance of its expiration at the end of this month.
In response to an Irish Times reader call-out on experiences of the winter stay on evictions, several Dublin tenants spoke of there being “nowhere to go” if they lose their current accommodation.
https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2023/03/06/i…
# International, Eviction, Personal stories.First-of-its-kind workers' co-op offers housing to low-income earners in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside
Lori Culbert Vancouver Sun (No paywall)Wendy Tredger lived for seven years on the first floor of the historic Keefer Rooms SRO in Chinatown, where her sleep was routinely interrupted by responding to the increasing number of overdoses caused by the toxic drug crisis.
“There was nobody on the front desk, so the paramedics would pull up below my window and yell, and I would run down (to the ground floor) to let them in. I don’t think that in the last year there was ever one night that there wasn’t at least one ambulance call,” said Tredger, 69.
https://vancouversun.com/business/real-estate/first-of-its-kind-…
# International, Co-operatives and resident-led housing, Housing affordability, Work, employment.‘It’s legal, there’s just no precedent’: the first US town to demand a rent decrease
Wilfred Chan The Guardian (No paywall)’s 2pm after an overnight shift, and Amanda Treasure is lying in bed unable to sleep. She can’t stop thinking about how most of what she brings home from her full-time job as a caretaker – two $900 checks a month – goes to rent for the two-bedroom apartment with a mold problem she shares with her disabled husband, teenage son and five pets.
Treasure has lived her whole life in Kingston, New York, a quiet city about 90 miles north of Manhattan. She got her first job at 14 delivering papers, and by 16 she was paying for her first car and insurance. The skating rink and bowling alley Treasure frequented as a teen disappeared soon after the IBM factory that once employed thousands of residents closed in the early 1990s, devastating the town. “Now there’s nothing to do here, and the prices are through the roof,” Treasure says. “And I’m working my butt off, but there’s nothing to show. This world is just not what I expected being 52 years old.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/mar/07/new-york-housing…
# Legal significance International, Rent, Housing affordability, Local Government, Strong communities.City mayors call for rent freeze and eviction ban for England’s tenants
Kevin Rawlinson The Guardian (No paywall)An immediate rent freeze and a ban on evictions should be introduced in England to help renters deal with the cost of living crisis, the mayors of three of the biggest cities have said.
It would bring the country into line with Scotland, where tenants have been protected under emergency measures designed to curb a “humanitarian emergency” announced by Nicola Sturgeon last September.
“Rising costs of food and energy mean millions are struggling to make ends meet,” the campaigners wrote in an open letter to the levelling up secretary, Michael Gove, on Wednesday, saying renters were “among the worst affected by the cost of living crisis”.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/23/city-mayors-call…
# International, Eviction, Rent, Housing affordability.