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
Climate change hits low-income earners harder – and poor housing in hotter cities is a disastrous combination
Stephen Healy and Abby Nellick Lopes The Conversation (No paywall)Cost of living is a major focus in this election campaign, and yet political leaders have been unacceptably silent on the disproportionate impact of climate change on Australians with low incomes. This is particularly true for Western Sydney, home to around 2.5 million people. Over the last half century, the balance of Sydney’s social housing has been pushed to the west, where it can be up to 10℃ hotter than the breeze-cooled coast. Meanwhile, rapid housing development reduces existing tree canopy daily, further intensifying heat. This situation locks in cycles of disadvantage for decades and generations to come. Even if we limit global warming to 1.5℃ this century, Western Sydney will still experience fewer than 17 days of 35℃ per year by 2090.
https://theconversation.com/climate-change-hits-low-income-earne…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Rent, Climate change, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Advocates troubled by big cut to ‘magnificent’ program to house homeless
Cara Waters The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)A program introduced during the pandemic to provide shelter for rough sleepers will be cut back in a move that homelessness advocates say could put people back on the streets. The Council to Homeless Persons claimed a $43 million a year cut to the From Homelessness to a Home program in the recent state government budget could see 1440 people miss out on support. Housing Minister Richard Wynne disputed that estimate and said rough sleepers would be supported through other initiatives. Council to Homeless Persons chief executive Jenny Smith said the budget, which provided $75 million for homelessness services overall, offered no clarity on how the From Homelessness to a Home program would be maintained and the newly announced funding had no focus on providing a soft landing for rough sleepers.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/advocates-troubled-by-b…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.‘Fascism works like that’: homeless New Yorkers struggle amid police sweeps
Samira Asma-Sadeque The Guardian (No paywall)[New York's new Democratic mayor, Eric Adams] said that he would pair up police with mental health service providers to address homelessness, and that there is “nothing dignified about sleeping on the streets”. But homeless advocates have slammed Adams’s tactics as simply retreading old policies that have failed to meaningfully address the underlying problems causing homelessness and are, in fact, more geared to generating sympathetic headlines in the city’s media.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/may/11/new-york-city-ho…
# International, Homelessness.Perth residents with jobs, mortgages turn to charities like Foodbank, Anglicare for help
Alicia Bridges ABC (No paywall)A growing number of people with jobs and mortgages are turning to charities for help because they can't afford food and rent, according to Perth not-for-profits. Anglicare chief executive Mark Glasson said ... "One in six people that comes to us for assistance at the moment has a mortgage. Now, that would have been unheard of only three or four years ago." ... He said the not-for-profit had also seen an increase in the number of people signing leases when they were not sure they could afford the payments. "Just to keep the roof over their head," Mr Glasson said. ... Concerns about the issue were raised at a stakeholder meeting held on Tuesday to brainstorm urgent solutions to the rental crisis. Hosted by Shelter WA, the meeting was attended by community housing workers, academics, planners and representatives from the real estate industry. Suggestions for "quick fixes" to address the crisis included repurposing unoccupied office spaces and ground-floor shopfronts, but the proposal that garnered the most support was to establish a rental assistance scheme.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-06/foodbank-perth-working-po…
# Australia, Rent, Families, Home ownership, Housing affordability.Eviction filings are up sharply as pandemic rental aid starts to run out
Jennifer Ludden (No paywall)From the United States ... Emergency rental aid has helped keep millions of people in their homes during the pandemic. But that federal program will start winding down this summer, when it expects to have allocated all of the $46 billion from Congress. About half of that has been spent so far, and in some places programs are now running out of their share of the money and shutting down. That's sending eviction filings up sharply, even as rents spike and inflation cuts deeper into household budgets. (NPR)
https://www.npr.org/2022/05/04/1095559147/eviction-filings-are-u…
# International, Rent, Affordable housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.'Big four' banks made huge profits as Australians took out bigger mortgages for pricier housing
Nassim Khadem ABC (No paywall)Australia's big four banks — ANZ, CBA, NAB and Westpac — now hold a whopping $1.87 trillion in home loans. Throughout 2021, as Australian house prices skyrocketed, Australians kept on taking bigger mortgages — many worth more than six times their income — pushing up the profits of the big four banks. EY analysis of big four bank 2022 half-year results, has found that they had a combined cash profit after tax of $14.4 billion. That's up $700 million from the 2021 half-year results, or an increase of 5.1 per cent. The big four's $1.87 trillion share of home loans makes up the bulk of the nation's total housing loans, which is worth almost $2 trillion all up.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-10/big-four-banks-profits-ho…
# Australia, Housing affordability, Housing market.Tiny and alternate houses can help ease Australia’s rental affordability crisis
Heather Shearer and Paul Burton The Conversation (No paywall)Rental housing in Australia is less affordable than ever before. It is no exaggeration to call the situation a crisis, with vacancy rates at record lows. But there are some relatively simple, easy-to-implement and cost-effective things that can be done to ease rental affordability pressures. These include relaxing planning restrictions on small and non-traditional houses, allowing granny flats to be rented to anyone, permitting property owners to let space to tiny house dwellers, and possibly even subsidising the building of granny flats or modification of houses for dual occupancy.
https://theconversation.com/tiny-and-alternate-houses-can-help-e…
# Australia, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market, Planning and development.Sinn Féin makes history ‘after promising biggest shake-up in housing for 50 years’
Grainne Cuffe Inside Housing (Paywall)Sinn Féin became the largest party in Stormont following the election on 5 May after winning 27 seats, followed by the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) which came in second after it dropped three seats to 25. The Alliance Party won 17 seats compared with eight in the last election. Sinn Féin has described its housing plan as the “biggest shake-up of the housing system for over 50 years”. As part of this, it plans to deliver more than 100,000 homes over the next 15 years in urban and rural communities across the North. Deirdre Hargey, communities minister and a Sinn Féin politician, unveiled this plan as part of the draft housing supply strategy in December. She said a third of the homes will be affordable.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/sinn-fein-makes-history-aft…
# International, Public and community housing, Affordable housing.