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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
Woollahra’s newest NIMBY idea: Don’t count parks or schools as land
Michael Koziol The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Two Woollahra councillors have proposed a novel way to reduce the number of new homes they are required to build: stop counting the area’s schools, parks and golf course as land. ... They argue that if parks, schools, infrastructure and other public spaces are excluded from what counts as Woollahra’s land mass, the local government area’s “real” population density increases from 4851 people per square kilometre to 6567.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/woollahra-s-newest-nimby-ide…
# NSW, Local Government, Planning and development.‘Eviction by dereliction’: the decay of public housing
Claire Connelly (Paywall)Housing initiatives purporting to create a ‘social mix’ are a convenient way for governments to avoid building new social housing or to neglect existing stock while shifting public land into private ownership.
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2022/04/09/evi…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Estate renewal.Domestic abuse survivor still in regional Queensland crisis shelter after 14 months
Katrina Beavan ABC (No paywall)Jennifer vividly remembers the moment she tearfully arrived at a crisis accommodation centre in a small regional Queensland town with nothing but the clothes she was wearing and her dog in her arms. After suffering domestic abuse at the hands of her ex-partner for close to a decade, she finally fled her home. She remains there more than a year later, a stone's throw away from where her abuser lives, because of a statewide housing crisis. In a town where everyone knows everyone, Jennifer still sees him frequently.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-12/escaping-domestic-abuse-i…
# Australia, Domestic violence, Homelessness, Housing market.The Week in Housing: a question of rent
Jack Simpson Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The end of March ... sees the start of a new rent year. ... Under the government’s rules, social landlords are able to raise their rents by September’s Consumer Price Index plus 1%. In this year’s case, the maximum is 4.1% – the highest for many years. This comes at a very difficult time for tenants, who are dealing with the other cost of living challenges such as National Insurance hikes, food price rises and increasing energy costs. So with all of this going on, how have social landlords decided to approach the rent increase? Have they attempted to soften the blow on residents, or gone for the maximum allowance?
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/the-week-in-hous…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Housing market.Social Housing Regulation Bill: are the government’s reforms enough to transform the sector?
Stephen Delahunty Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... Will the government’s new reform package be enough to rebalance the landlord-tenant relationship? ... The announcement came almost a year-and-a-half after the Social Housing White Paper was published and more than four years since the preceding Social Housing Green Paper was first launched. ... The government has promised that the latest changes will improve the way social housing is regulated and encourage greater engagement with tenants, but will it live up to these expectations? Inside Housing dives into the announcement to see what the sector thinks.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/insight/insight/social-housing-r…
# International, Public and community housing, Federal Government.The decline of housing supply in New Zealand: why it happened and how to reverse it
New Zealand Infrastructure Commission (No paywall)Over the last 20 years, New Zealand has experienced faster growth in real house prices than any other OECD country. In the space of a generation, housing has gone from being abundant and reasonably affordable to being scarce and prohibitively expensive. This report analyses how prices and supply have changed over 90 years from the 1930s to the 2010s, to understand whether more rapid price increases in recent decades are due to faster growth in housing demand, or slow housing supply responses.
# International, Housing market.New analysis shows Black women targeted disproportionately for eviction
(No paywall)Rasheedah Phillips, Director of Housing at Policylink and Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition stop by the Cross Connection to discuss a new analysis from USA Today showing how black women are being evicted at a rate twice that of white women, and offer thoughts on how those facing eviction may be able to stay in their homes. (MSNBC)
https://www.msnbc.com/cross-connection/watch/new-analysis-shows-…
# Video International, Eviction, Race and ethnicity.Sydney, Melbourne mortgage repayments to rise by thousands a year
John Collett The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Home owners need to start preparing for higher interest rates and thousands of dollars a year in extra repayments after the Reserve Bank of Australia gave its strongest indication it will start increasing rates this year. Big bank economists are pencilling in a rise in the cash rate in June from 0.1 per cent – the first rise since November 2010. As inflation shows no signs of abating and the jobs market remains tight, and once the May 21 federal election is out of the way, the big bank economists believe the RBA will make its move.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/planning-and-budgeting/sydney-melbo…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.