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
Here’s Exactly What To Do If Your Share House Floods
Charles Rushforth (No paywall)As floods rock northern New South Wales and southeast Queensland this week, and with more thunderstorms predicted for the rest of the week, it’s a very good time to start thinking about your options if your share house gets hit by a flood. ... Tenant’s rights websites are critical for knowing your rights as a renter in Australia. The Tenant’s Union NSW and Tenants Queensland both offer specialised fact sheets, detailing your rights as a renter in NSW during emergencies such as floods, as well as tenant advice networks that offer personalised service based on your specific situation. According to Jemima Mowbray, the Policy and Advocacy Manager of Tenants Union NSW, the first rule to follow in a flood event is to “keep yourself safe”. “Leave the premises if you need to if your housing has become unsafe. Don’t worry about things in relation to obligations to landlords. Your obligation is to keep yourself safe.” Mowbray told Junkee. Mowbray says to especially follow the directions of council or emergency personnel if they arrive to evacuate you from your property. “There are a couple of ways you can deal with this as a renter,” Mowbray says. “Get in touch with your landlord or you agent straight away to let them know what’s happened; that the place is unsafe. Then you can talk to them about a rent reduction or rent abatement.” Mowbray says that while landlords aren’t obligated to provide or offer temporary accommodation after a flood, you are eligible for a rent reduction or abatement if you’re displaced from your housing as a result. [Keep reading] (Junkee) Check out the Tenants Union of NSW factsheets: ☔️'Repairs and maintenance' at: [tenants.org.au/factsheet-06-repairs-and-maintenance] and ⚡️'Disaster damage if it is preventing you from staying safe at home' at[tenants.org.au/factsheet-22-disaster-damage].
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Share houses.Everyone In was one of the few housing success stories of this century. But the progress risks being wasted
Jules Birch Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The pandemic has shown that homelessness can be reduced if the right policies are in place. But any progress made then risks being reversed if nothing changes ... So the good news is that the pandemic saw a welcome interruption in the upward trend in homelessness since 2012 ... and by the repeal of the Vagrancy Act. The bad news is that most of the support measures introduced during the pandemic have since been reversed, with the Universal Credit uplift withdrawn, Local Housing Allowance rates refrozen despite rising rents and mounting concern that evictions could rise sharply this year.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/everyone-in-was-…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.‘Face reality’: Don’t build in flood prone areas, resilience boss says
Michael Koziol, Nick O'Malley, Lucy Cormack and Charlotte Grieve The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)The head of the federal government’s disaster recovery agency has called for an end to floodplain development and says inundated homes should not be rebuilt, as insurers brace for one of the biggest flood claim events in Australian history. ... [Insurance Council of Australia chief executive Andrew Hall] said the increasing financial toll of fires, floods, cyclones and hail was evidence of the changing climate. “Regardless of anyone’s views around climate, the facts we can see through insurance claims over the last decade show year-on-year catastrophic losses are being incurred.” Climate Council research director Simon Bradshaw said the increased rainfall delivered by the La Nina system was being supercharged by climate change because the warmer atmosphere could hold more moisture and discharge more energy.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/face-reality-don-t-build-in-…
# Australia, Climate change, Housing market, Local Government.Ukraine Airbnbs receive bookings in effort to get money to residents
Mark Sweney The Guardian (No paywall)Members of the public are paying for Airbnb rentals in Ukraine to help get money to residents who are facing extreme financial hardship because of the Russian invasion. The home rental platform has already moved to offer free housing to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees, but members of the public have come up with a novel way to financially help those who either intend to remain or are trapped in the country owing to the conflict. One couple who made a booking for 3-10 March in Kyiv, posted confirmation on Twitter and wrote: “Hello Maria, my wife and I have just booked your apartment for one week, but of course we will not be visiting. This is just so you can receive some money.” ... On Monday Airbnb pledged to offer free housing to 100,000 Ukrainian refugees. The spokesperson said the company had received an “overwhelming response” to the initiative, with more than 260,000 visitors so far to a dedicated page where it is possible sign up to be a host or donate. [Brian Chesky, its chief executive and co-founder,]said that in the last decade the company had provided housing free of charge to 54,000 refugees globally in conjunction with its hosts, most recently in relation to last year’s crisis in Afghanistan.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/03/ukraine-airbn…
# International, International, Short-term holiday letting.The rental market was tight before the south-east Queensland flood — what now for people who can't return home?
Emilie Gramenz ABC (No paywall)"The house is probably a write-off because the walls are all swollen, the kitchen's completely destroyed, and bathrooms," [Cass Thurston] said. When the ABC met Cass during the clean-up effort in Brisbane's south-west, she acknowledged that she and "thousands of others" would need to look for a new rental property. But a few days later, after considering the stress of trying to find somewhere in an extremely tight rental market, she and her family — who were already building a new home in a different suburb — have instead decided to spend the next year or so living with family. "There's people worse off than us right now, who don't have places to go and they're living out of evacuation centres — and my heart goes out to them," she said. Even before the floods there was a crush on rentals across Queensland amid a booming property market. Tenants Queensland CEO Penny Carr admits it is a major concern. "We've had quite a lot of calls already from people who either have to temporarily, or maybe in the longer term, have to get out of their property and they're struggling to find somewhere," she said. "It's pretty grim for people out there at the moment."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-05/qld-south-east-queensland…
# Australia, Rent, Homelessness.‘It’s all going up’: Workers face rental stress in key marginal seats
James Massola and Rachael Dexter The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Surging rents and flat wages are forcing critical childcare, aged care and supermarket workers deeper into rental stress in four marginal seats that will be critical to the outcome of the next election. New research from the “Everybody’s Home” campaign group has found that workers in the seats of Flinders (Victoria), Gilmore (NSW), Bass (Tasmania) and Longman (Queensland) have seen the share of their income spent on rent rise by between five and 13 per cent between February 2021 and February 2022. ... Everybody’s Home national spokeswoman Kate Colvin said aged care, childcare and supermarket workers were being “pushed to the brink of homelessness and poverty”.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/it-s-all-going-up-worker…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Homelessness, Housing market, Regional NSW, Work, employment.Houston Is Hailed as a National Success for Fighting Homelessness. But the Reality Isn’t Quite as Rosy.
Sam Russek (No paywall)From the United States ... In recent years, Houston has been trumpeted as the gold standard for its brand of “housing first” homeless services. Supported by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this program and others like it race to house people before pairing them with necessary treatments. This has been a complete shift for the city over the past decade. In 2011, HUD dinged Houston as a “priority community” after homelessness increased by 25 percent in one year. ... Today, CFTH boasts a 54 percent decrease in homelessness over the past 10 years as of 2021 (from over 8,500 to 3,055 people), and representatives from across the country—and even London, according to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner’s office —have made the pilgrimage to the city to study how it did it. On January 26, the mayor doubled down on the approach, announcing a $100 million increase in funds for the Communitywide Covid-19 Housing Program, or CCHP, on top of the original $65 million charter that housed more than 7,000 people from October 2020 to December 2021. ... But [simple overall stats don’t show the truth of the housing crisis and] if you talk to people who are unhoused in Houston, or are working to help people find stable housing, the picture is far less rosy. (New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/article/165368/houston-homeless-populati…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing market.Second homes in Wales could face 300% council tax hikes
BBC (No paywall)Some second home owners in Wales could pay four times their current level of council tax from next year, the Welsh government has announced. Currently councils can charge a second home premium of up to 100% but that will increase to 300% from April 2023. The move, included in a Labour-Plaid Cymru cooperation agreement, is part of efforts to make it easier for people to afford homes where they grew up. Also, read Stephen Delahunty's article on the same issue in 'Inside Housing'. He writes: 'Councils will be able to apply different premiums to second homes and long-term empty dwellings, depending what is appropriate for their local circumstances. The Welsh government is encouraging councils to use the additional funding to improve the supply of affordable housing.' Go to: [https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/second-home-owners-in-wales-face-huge-tax-hike-under-new-plans-74440]
# International, Affordable housing, Home ownership, Housing market, Tax.