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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
'If you don’t like it, leave’: renters priced out of their homes as landlords pass on costs of RBA rate hikes
Rafqa Touma The Guardian (No paywall)Tenants who have already seen their rent rise to unaffordable levels in response to interest rate hikes fear they will face further increases, after the Reserve Bank of Australia lifted the cash rate for a fourth consecutive month. ... The policy and advocacy manager at Tenants’ Union of NSW, Jemima Mowbray, said on average it costs a household about $4,000 each time they move, not including the bond cost. “You’re facing the stress of not being able to find a home, scrambling to find something more affordable,” she said. “But you’re also going to build up a debt.” As financial pressure builds, Mowbray said “more households are not being able to cover the costs of basic needs”. ... The New South Wales Greens MP for Newtown, Jenny Leong, said there was a “desperate need” to reform rental laws. She has introduced a new bill to NSW parliament “regulating measures to provide relief and protection for renters”. “People are going to libraries or community spaces to stay warm because they can’t afford to pay rent and keep the heating on,” she said. The bill includes a cap on rents in line with the consumer price index.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/04/if-you-do…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Housing market, State Government.Even with a historic fall in house prices, rents are tipped to rise by as much as 10 per cent. Will they ever go down?
James Purtill ABC (No paywall)With news that house prices are falling sharply in several capital cities, millions of renters may be looking forward to paying the landlord a bit less. CoreLogic data released this week shows house prices in Australia are dropping at their fastest pace since the global financial crisis. The median price in Sydney saw the sharpest value falls in almost 40 years, while values in Melbourne, Hobart, Brisbane and regional Australia also dropped last month. So rents should fall too, right? Wrong. For most of the 2.4 million households renting from private landlords, rents will go up at a historically rapid clip over the next year. Here's why. [And] But there's another, longer term trend that's also driving up rents.
Because the cost of buying a house is unaffordable for many, Australians are renting longer in their lives, and into what Dr Martin [from UNSW's City Futures Research Centre] calls the "prime income years". "There's been more households who would have otherwise in previous generations have been owning, but they're renting," he said. "They are higher income houses and can spend that higher income on rental housing."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-02/house-prices-falling-but-…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market.Employer calls for changes to Victoria’s rental laws after receiving ‘invasive’ questions from agent
Rafqa Touma The Guardian (No paywall)An employer who was asked “invasive” and “completely unnecessary” questions by a real estate agent about a staff member is calling for changes to Victoria’s Residential Tenancies Act. An online employee referee questionnaire was sent to the secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall Council, Luke Hilakari, by a real estate agent in both an email and a text message.
The questionnaire included inquiries about the employee’s job position, typical tasks and responsibilities, gross annual income including superannuation and probation status. Also on the list was the open-ended question, “would you consider renting to this person?” among others about whether Hilakari considered his employee punctual, hard working, reliable and responsible. “These questions are deliberately and unnecessarily invasive,” Hilakari said. “In a reference check for someone getting a job you wouldn’t ask that many questions. “[They] are completely unnecessary to renting a house.” ... [Dr Chris Martin, a senior research fellow at the University of New South Wales] said the “big problem is that rental markets do get as tight as they are at the moment”. This gives agents the space to “ask for more precise and invasive information,” some of which “goes well beyond what is reasonably necessary”.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/03/employer-…
# Australia, Privacy and access, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Why this Corrimal affordable housing project won a national award
Connor Pearce Illawarra Mercury (Paywall)Prior to moving into a Correa Gardens unit in Corrimal, managed by the Housing Trust, one tenant in her 80s had been unable to leave her home. “We have a lady who was completely housebound in her previous property because of growing mobility problems,” Housing Trust CEO Michele Adair said.
“She literally hadn’t been able to get in or out of her apartment because it had stairs.” Now, the woman lives in an affordable, newly-built ground floor residence that has just won a national award. Correa Gardens won the Affordable Residential Development prize at the Urban Taskforce Australia 2022 Development Excellence Awards. This put the 34 homes on the site of a former primary school alongside billion dollar developments
https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/7840130/why-this-corri…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Disability, Older people.Australia’s rental crisis: Why some renters are having to choose between their pet or a roof over their heads
Molly Magennis (No paywall)Animal welfare groups are calling on the federal government to introduce a national law protecting renters with pets, as more and more pet owners are forced to make the heartbreaking decision between surrendering their furry friends or putting a roof over their heads. After 14 years, James and Fiona Bateman were forced out of their rental in April this year when their landlord decided to sell the property. The couple, based in Adelaide, were not only forced to look for a new home in the middle of a rental crisis, but also faced the difficult task of finding one that was also pet friendly. (7news.com.au)
https://7news.com.au/business/housing/australias-rental-crisis-w…
# Australia, Eviction, Federal Government, Pets.Why Thousands of People Are Left Out of New York City’s Daily Homeless Census
Eric Lach (No paywall)David Brand, a social worker turned journalist, got an assignment from City Limits, a small nonprofit news outlet, to write a series of articles about family homelessness in New York City. ... For the first article in the family-homelessness series, Brand interviewed several mothers with young children about their experiences in city shelters. After it was published, a homeless-rights advocate called to warn Brand. Why was he citing the shelter-population numbers released regularly by City Hall? Those were bad numbers, the advocate said. The city’s stats accounted for the tens of thousands of people who slept every night in shelters overseen by the Department of Homeless Services, which include New York City’s largest adult and family shelters. But there were thousands more who slept in smaller shelters overseen by other city agencies: domestic-violence shelters, shelters for people with H.I.V./AIDS, disaster-relief shelters, shelters for runaway kids. Brand still sounds floored talking about it. ... [Today] by sorting through publicly published stats, and by filing Freedom of Information requests for data not ordinarily published, City Limits compiled a “tracker” that offered a more complete look at the city’s shelter population.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-local-correspondents/why-thou…
# International, Homelessness.‘We felt like we’re nothing’: increasing voting among Australians experiencing homelessness
Jonathon Louth, Lisa Hill and Veronica Coram The Conversation (No paywall)... there is another election bellwether we never hear about: people experiencing homelessness. Taken as a group, those who experience homelessness are representative of multiple forms of disadvantage and marginalisation. Yet this is a very diverse group of people. While rough sleepers are the most recognisable, homelessness encompasses living in overcrowded accommodation, couch surfing, and being forced to sleep in cars, caravans or tents. ... Working with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) and three specialist homelessness service providers in Adelaide over the 2019 federal election, we undertook one of the largest studies of homelessness and voting habits.
https://theconversation.com/we-felt-like-were-nothing-increasing…
# Research alert Australia, Homelessness.Labor’s housing minister vows to do more to fix homelessness as ‘serious’ crisis spreads
Josh Butler The Guardian (No paywall)The federal housing minister, Julie Collins, has promised a greater leadership role from the commonwealth to address homelessness, as social advocates warn skyrocketing rental prices are forcing families to live in tents. The minister admitted Australia has “a really serious housing affordability challenge”, with key Labor policies for homebuyers and public housing not likely to open until early 2023. “We need to be ambitious,” Collins told Guardian Australian. “We all need to be working together to solve the housing problems in this country.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/03/labors-ho…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Federal Government, Home ownership, Homelessness.