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
Do renters have a right to heating and air-conditioning?
Ben Knight UNSW (No paywall)Expanding minimum standards for rental properties could improve conditions for renters shivering through the winter. Australian homes can get particularly cold during winter months. And if you’re a past or present renter, chances are you’ve been uncomfortably cold in your rental when temperatures drop. You may have asked, or considered asking, your landlord if they could please install something with more grunt than a little box heater. But are they obliged to help you stay warm at home?
https://www.unsw.edu.au/newsroom/news/2024/07/do-renters-have-a-…
# Hot topic Australia, Utilities electricity water gas.Queensland and South Australia lead the ranks in report that reveals most painful suburbs for renters
Annika Burgess ABC (No paywall)Australians remain in the grip of rental stress, but there are stark differences emerging across the country. The latest Rental Pain Index (RPI) report by property research and analysis firm Suburb trends found signs of easing pain in some states, and "promising" improvements in Tasmania. But Queensland and South Australia remain stuck above the 80 per cent RPI mark, exceeding critical levels. Suburb trends analyst and founder Kent Lardner says the monthly report reveals a complex picture of Australia's rental market, and there are significant challenges across the board.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-09/rental-pain-index-austral…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.Sharing risk in shared housing: rental regulations and housing justice in Australia
Zoë Goodall Taylor & Francis (No paywall)Shared housing in the private rental sector (PRS), where people rent with non-family, is becoming more significant across many countries. However, from a housing justice lens, it is unclear whether housing policies and regulations based on normative understandings of households are equipped to effectively support shared housing renters. Through a case study of Australia, which operates on a ‘consumer protection’ model of rental regulation, we ask how current Australian rental regulations enable or restrict housing justice for people in shared housing in the PRS. We conduct a critical discourse analysis of consumer-oriented tenancy information published by Australian state governments and identify explicit or implicit risks in the text that may be experienced by shared housing renters.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19491247.2024.23678…
# Research alert Australia, Rent, Share houses.Why Australian homes are so cold
ABC (No paywall)VIDEO: When you think of Australian weather, the first thing that comes to mind probably isn't how cold it can get. "I'm from Norway, but Australian winters have humbled me." It doesn't even get that cold compared to international standards, especially compared to our friends in the Northern Hemisphere.
# Video Australia, Utilities electricity water gas.Crossbench MPs urge Attorney-General to properly fund struggling community legal services
Dechlan Brennan National Indigenous Times (No paywall)A group of crossbench MPs have written to the federal Attorney-General, along with his state and territory counterparts, urging them to commit an additional $174 million to support the country's struggling community legal services. It comes after an independent review into the funding of legal services found the current levels are drastically insufficient to meet the needs of Australia's population, especially for marginalised groups like Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.
https://nit.com.au/03-07-2024/12338/crossbench-urged-attorney-ge…
# Hot topic Australia, Aboriginal renters, Rent.Retrofitting the classic Aussie home
Jess Davis ABC (No paywall)Laine Taylor fell in love with the character of this 1880s miners’ cottage, in the Victorian town of Ballarat, the first moment she saw it. But she was under no illusions about the downsides of buying an old, cold house, in an old, cold town.“Being such an old house and in such a cold climate, it’s going to be really important, going forward, to do everything that I can to make it energy efficient.” She’s part of a growing movement of Australians retrofitting older homes to make them more liveable and reduce emissions in our changing climate.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-07-04/retrofitting-australian-h…
# Hot topic Australia, Utilities electricity water gas.This woman spends 100% of her income on rent
Natalie Stechyson CBC (No paywall)Living with your parents. Living with your ex. Giving up basic needs like food and clothing. These are just some of the sacrifices Canadians say they've been making to pay rent amid the surging prices and decreased availability marking Canada's rental housing crisis. Demand for rentals is outpacing supply across the country. A recent CBC News analysis of more than 1,000 neighbourhoods across Canada's largest cities found that less than one per cent of rentals are both vacant and affordable for the majority of Canadian renters.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-rent-expensive-1.7240858
# Must read International, Rent.Stabilising rents in England: why and how we should limit rent rises
Tarun Bhakta Shelter UK (No paywall)The conversation in England about rent controls is a mess. Very often you will hear 'rent controls don’t work' as a throw away comment, often without any evidence - and that throwaway comment is used to dismiss any kind of regulation of rents. One of the most frustrating things about this take is that it’s far too simple. There are hundreds of different types of rent controls - ranging from ‘rent freezes’ to ‘rent pressure zones’ to ‘rent stabilisation’. And to say that they simply 'don’t work' ignores the fact that many countries across Europe are operating some form of rent control.
https://england.shelter.org.uk/what_we_do/updates_insights_and_i…
# Must read International, Rent.