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
Older women often rent in poverty – shared home equity could help some escape
Brendan Coates The Conversation (No paywall)Many older Australian women face insecure futures. Those who are single, divorced or widowed are much more likely to suffer poverty, housing stress and homelessness. Our new Grattan Institute proposal for a national shared equity scheme could help many escape that fate. Single women who rent rather than own their homes are at the greatest risk of poverty in retirement and are the fastest growing group of homeless Australians. They are financially vulnerable because they are more likely to have worked in low-wage jobs, are more likely to have worked part-time or casually, and are more likely to have taken long breaks from paid employment to care for others. In later life, women experience the full consequences of lower lifetime earnings, typically finding themselves with less super than men and in many cases missing the opportunity to buy a house or losing the half share in a home they had. Women who have separated by age 65 are three times as likely as still married-women to rent, and they have two-thirds the assets of separated men.
https://theconversation.com/older-women-often-rent-in-poverty-sh…
# Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Women.Housing assistance reforms needed to support the wellbeing of people in precarious housing
Rachel Ong ViforJ, Ranjodh Singh, Emma Baker, Rebecca Bentley and Jack Hewton AHURI (No paywall)AHURI Report ... New AHURI research has found a widening gap in the wellbeing of people living in precarious housing versus those who are non-precariously housed. The study, led by researchers from Curtin University, examined different population subgroups between the period 2002 to 2018, finding the wellbeing of singles, households with no children, low-income households, private renters and major city residents worsens when they are precariously housed. ... when private renters fall into precarious housing, their wellbeing scores fall by a greater extent than other housing tenures. Related to this, forced moves are a key depressant of wellbeing. The scope for improving security of tenure in the rental sector is therefore significant. Lease terms and rent levels are currently lightly regulated in the private rental sector in Australia. A renter’s security of tenure could be improved if they had the ability to exercise choice over tenancy length. Tighter rent regulation or rent price control—as in countries such as Spain, Belgium and Germany—can also offer greater protection to tenants by preventing landlords from trying to ‘price out’ tenants in an attempt to end a tenancy. Abolishing ‘without grounds’ tenancy termination will also have the effect of improving security of tenure.
https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/news/Housing-assistance-reform…
# Research alert Australia, Domestic violence, Eviction, Rent, Families, Health, Housing affordability, Housing market, No-grounds evictions, Young people.Testing the Goldilocks house: Not too hot, not too cold and inexpensive to run
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)In Sydney’s Martin Place, two identical-looking tiny houses sit side by side. Each contains a cubic metre block of ice, about the size of a small fridge. One house is built “like a wooden tent”, as John Beurle, a member of the non-profit Australian Passive House Association (APHA), describes homes constructed to existing building standards. The other is tightly sealed and insulated to “passive house” standards. The APHA says they keep homes in the Goldilocks zone - not too hot, not too cold. In Australia, these buildings are designed to keep the temperature between 20 and 25 degrees Celsius year round. Until March 4, the public is invited to watch the ice melt in the houses in Martin Place, monitor progress via the webcams, and make a guess how they will compare. ... [Sydney’s demonstration] was funded by a $40,000 grant from Sydney City Council. A spokesman said the city supported the project’s aim to show better building design provided multiple benefits, and was more cost-effective to do upfront than retrofit later. Architect Caroline Pidcock, a co-founder of Architects Declare, said the cheapest and easiest way to reduce emissions was to make homes naturally comfortable, healthy and energy efficient.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/testing-the-goldilocks-house…
# NSW, Climate change, Minimum habitability standards.‘It’s a sanctuary’: the magic of quiet, low-cost, allergy-free ‘passive’ homes
Aliya Utuova The Guardian (No paywall)The first night Stephanie Silva spent at her new Brooklyn apartment was uncommonly quiet. So was the following morning and the next day. The 32-year-old native New Yorker had forgotten the last time she was able to mute the city of 8.2 million. “It’s like a sanctuary,” Silva says, but as soon as she opens the street-facing windows, the bustling outside noise fills her living room. Once she closed the windows again, the difference was instantly noticeable. “Since moving here my anxiety went out the window,” Silva says, referring to the 10th-floor affordable apartment in Ocean Hill, part of the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. But what sets this 67-unit building apart from the rest of the housing in the city is its “passive” element. A passive building is designed to use minimal energy. To be efficient in heating and cooling, the space is sealed with airtight insulation – like a vacuum flask – so that it can keep the heat in during winter while keeping it out during the summer.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/24/passive-buil…
# International, Climate change, Minimum habitability standards.Pay rises, not military support, the solution: former aged care commissioner
Dana Daniel The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Former Aged Care Royal Commissioner Lynelle Briggs says the report she co-authored warned the federal government about an impending staffing crisis in the sector and backed the case for a pay rise, as new polling shows most voters support military assistance in homes struggling to fill shifts. Ms Briggs, who co-wrote the final report delivered to the government a year ago along with fellow commissioner Tony Pagone QC, said the government’s slow response to the sector’s workforce challenges had left aged care homes exposed when the Omicron wave of COVID-19 hit this summer.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/pay-rises-not-military-s…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health, Housing market, Older people.Why are home prices in this coastal town rising faster than anywhere else in Australia?
Tim Fernandez ABC (No paywall)When Sally Medcalf was evicted from her home in Kiama on the NSW south coast in January, she never thought her family would be plunged into homelessness. However, unable to find a new home in the area, she was relieved when a friend offered to let the family camp in her backyard. "It has been impossible," she says. "It is not difficult, it is impossible. The amount that they want in rent we cannot afford. We are a single-income family but my husband makes good money, yet we still can't afford the [up to] $1,000 [per week] that they're now wanting for houses." ... An increase in migration from capital cities during the COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled demand for homes in regional towns such as Kiama.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-02-26/is-kiama-the-least-afford…
# NSW, Eviction, Rent, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Regional NSW.Stockland sells retirement villages for close to $1 billion
Carolyn Cummins The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Property giant Stockland has delivered a first-half profit of $850 million, up from $339 million in the prior half thanks to more than half a billion dollars in gains from revaluing its shopping centres, and announced a $987 million deal to sell its retirement villages. ... Stockland - the nation’s biggest home and land developer with a $9.6 billion sharemarket value -is a diversified company that develops, owns, manages and invests in residential properties, retirement living, office and commercial sites and malls and large retail town centres. As part of its strategy to focus on commercial, logistics and residential operations, the company on Wednesday announced it has sold its retirement living homes for $987 million to EQT Infrastructure. The deal includes 58 retirement living villages and 10 development projects underway and in planning, with more than 300 Stockland employees transferring to EQT. Stockland chief executive Tarun Gupta said the sale was part of the company’s strategy to redirect funds to the growing land lease sector, which is where a resident buys their house but rents the land on which it sits from Stockland for a more affordable entry to the booming housing market. The company last year bought Queensland lifestyle villages group Halycon to get access to its big development pipeline in that sector. “The Land Lease Communities business is performing ahead of the assumptions that underpinned Stockland’s acquisition of the Halcyon business in August 2021,” Mr Gupta said.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/stockland-sells-retire…
# Australia, Land lease communities, Housing market, Older people.Law criminalising rough sleeping to be repealed
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... A law that criminalises rough sleeping and begging in England and Wales has been repealed. Last night the government tabled an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which will see the 200-year-old Vagrancy Act repealed. The move has been welcomed by homelessness charities that have long campaigned for the act to be abolished. Passed in 1824, the law gives authorities the power to punish people “in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence”. Studies have shown that the act has been used to move rough sleepers on from certain locations. Rough sleeping minister Eddie Hughes said he was “delighted” to announced the “outdated” act would be repealed.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/law-criminalising-roug…
# International, Homelessness.