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
Senators say yes to expanding rent controls from July 1
Dutch News (No paywall)As expected, senators on Tuesday voted in favour of legislation that will extend rent controls to cover most of the Netherlands’ rental property market from July 1. “This is an enormous milestone,” said housing minister Hugo de Jonge, who is bowing out next week when the new government comes to power. “This new law will protect tenants and we really need it. The explosion in rents because of the shortage of housing has made things impossible for people with a normal income. This legislation is going to make a difference for thousands of tenants.” De Jonge said earlier he expects 90% of Dutch rental property will fall under rent controls in the new system.
https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/06/senators-say-yes-to-expanding-r…
# Hot topic International, Rent.Toronto residents flood city lotteries amid ‘impossibly unaffordable’ housing
Campbell MacDiarmid The Guardian (No paywall)Toronto inhabitants fed up with rising rents are flooding city-run lotteries for affordable housing in new developments, but the chance of being selected for a subsidized unit is often less than 1%. One new development in the city’s West End recently offered a random public draw to allocate 135 units with rents pegged to income ceilings that would cost hundreds of dollars less than market rates. Nearly 12,500 people entered the draw for the homes aimed at middle-income earners in the Galleria on the Park development.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/26/toronto-af…
# Hot topic International, Rent.Squatters take London’s housing crisis into their own hands
Suban Abdulla and Natalie Thomas Reuters (No paywall)In the shopping streets and housing estates of the south London town of Croydon, some once-derelict buildings are slowly coming back to life. At a former school, peeling walls are getting a fresh coat of paint, and laundry hangs on a line to dry. Over at a disused youth centre, there is laughter in the gymnasium-turned-dormitory, and a vase of purple flowers decorates a scrubbed kitchen counter. The Reclaim Croydon collective, a squatters’ group, has taken over disused commercial premises to provide beds for the homeless, saying it is providing a community-based solution to a broken housing market. “The government is failing homeless people,” said one of the youth centre’s new occupants, who goes by the name Leaf.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/britain-elec…
# Must read International, Rent, Security and safety.'How will we afford children with rent increases?'
Alix Hattenstone, Miguel Roca-Terry and Jonathan Fagg BBC (No paywall)The average cost of renting privately in England has risen by nearly a quarter since the last general election. In December 2019 rent cost £1,064 a month on average according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). By May 2024 this had risen by 22% to £1,301 for new and existing tenancies.
Renters have told the BBC they have settled for mouldy properties, sofa-surfed or moved back in with relatives. The National Residential Landlords Association blamed a “chronic shortage” of private rental homes on high interest rates prompting landlords to leave the market.
Market Forces and Malpractice
James Meek London Review of Books (No paywall)ne morning in Manchester, in November 2023, a young man went looking for a place to stay. He’d lost his job and couldn’t pay the rent on his flat. When he asked the council for advice, they told him to stay put. He did, until the bailiffs came and changed the locks. He slept rough in a train station. He was on drugs. His phone was stolen; he told the police but there was an argument and he was arrested. The police released him, but he had nowhere to go. He remembered the address of an acquaintance, a man called Josh Morris, who has a solid career in HR and owned a two-bedroom flat in Skyline Chambers, one of the smart new blocks close to the synthetic neighbourhood that property developers have branded ‘Noma’. But Morris, too, had just been kicked out of his home. Six years after the death of 72 people in the fire that consumed Grenfell Tower in London, fed by cheap cladding that acted like solid petrol, the owners of the freehold on Morris’s building and the Manchester fire service had decided it was too dangerous for the occupants of its 107 flats to stay in their homes. They were told to evacuate at once and not return until further notice.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n13/james-meek/market-forces…
# Hot topic International, Security and safety.Public Housing in Vienna, Austria
Action for Public Housing (No paywall)Presentation by Greta Werner to Action for Public Housing about Public Housing in Vienna, Austria.
# Hot topic, Video International, Public and community housing.NYC shuttered 80% of its Airbnbs in an attempt to make housing more affordable. All that's done so far is make hotels more expensive.
Eliza Relman and Dan Latu Business Insider (No paywall)Last September, New York City began enforcing its strict new regulations on short-term rentals. Since then, the number of legal short-term rentals listed on Airbnb and other platforms has plummeted. Less than a year into the city's policy, known as Local Law 18, it's not clear whether the near-ban is achieving one of its central goals: relieving pressure on the city's severe housing shortage. But as summer tourism heats up, the dearth of rentals and rising hotel-room prices mean visitors to the city are in for an even pricier trip than they probably bargained for.
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-numbers-shrink-hotel-pric…
# Hot topic International, .Cockroaches and balconies as bedrooms: How foreign student Valentina survived Sydney
Daniella White The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)When Chilean national Valentina Olivares arrived in Sydney in 2016 as an international student, the reality of life in Australia was far from the rosy picture painted by migration agents. She had to work cash-in-hand jobs and didn’t realise she had any employment rights. Then there was the struggle to find liveable accommodation, dealing with bullying landlords and dodgy share houses. “The agents say they will support students to find a job and say they have a list of employers with many jobs waiting with good salaries,” she said. “But this is not the reality. People are misled, there is misinformation.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/cockroaches-and-balconies-as…
# Hot topic NSW, Discrimination, Rent, Starting a tenancy.