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
‘Pushed to the edge’: Australian aged care providers facing dire staff shortages, unions say
Christopher Knaus The Guardian (No paywall)Aged care workers are being “pushed to the edge” amid a worsening Omicron crisis, a lack of rapid tests, dire staffing shortages and effective bans on essential visitors, unions and advocates say. Data suggests Omicron had spread to more than 700 aged care homes across Australia last week, compounding existing frailties in the aged care system. Providers have pleaded with the government for a surge workforce, including using the Australian Defence Force, and complained of dire shortages of rapid antigen tests which the commonwealth had promised to provide for residents, staff and essential visitors.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/28/pushed-to…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health, Housing market, Older people.The psychopathy of our building code: it’s immediately cheaper for net zero homeowners NOW, so why delay?
Nigel Howard The Fifth Estate (No paywall)The only beneficiaries of the the Consultation Regulation Impact Statement accounting were the energy suppliers and in particular the fossil fuel industries — presumably a politically motivated decision. ... Regulating net zero emission homes has an overriding important non-financial benefit — it would ensure that no new home built in Australia adds to the emissions that compromise the future for our children and grandchildren. It’s impossible to overstate how important and urgent this is.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/given-that-its-im…
# Australia, Utilities electricity water gas, Climate change, Housing market.Townsville vacancies at 10-year low as rental prices soar, housing supply scarce
Zilla Gordon and Henry Bretz ABC (No paywall)n the regional city of Townsville, a two-bedroom unit in the CBD might set renters back as much as $570 per week. It puts the north Queensland capital well in front of its glamorous competition. ... interstate migration sparked by COVID-19 had driven prices up Queensland ...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-01-28/townsville-rental-prices-…
# Australia, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.Jerusalem: evictions show how urban planning is being weaponised against Palestinians
Haim Yacobi and Irit Katz The Conversation (No paywall)"One olive in my garden is better than anything material in the whole world." These sad words were uttered by Mahmoud Salhiya after his home in Sheikh Jarrah was recently demolished by Israeli forces. Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighbourhood of 3,000 inhabitants at the eastern part of Road 1 that runs north to south through Jerusalem and separates Israeli and Palestinian sectors. The neighbourhood has two distinctive sections: the north is the part inhabited by wealthier Palestinians while the poorer, southern part is populated by hundreds of Palestinian refugees from 1948. ... The Israeli authorities argued that the Salhiya property had been expropriated to establish a “special needs” school for the benefit of the neighbourhood’s residents. But this “top-down” planning did not include any consultation with the family or the community.
https://theconversation.com/jerusalem-evictions-show-how-urban-p…
# International, Eviction, Planning and development.First came the wedding, then the drag queens: Lane with ugly past transforms into an inner-city oasis
Megan Gorrey The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)A bromeliad plant growing in a rusted pot marks the spot where Sydney woman Rebecca Bernauer’s body was found stuffed behind a discarded fridge in a laneway near Kings Cross one night in 1997. ... Mr Vasquez and his partner, Mike Heenan, are on a mission to transform Hayden Lane. They planted “Rebecca’s pot” as a memorial to Ms Bernauer an 18-year-old sex worker who was killed weeks before she was due to give evidence in the drug trial of a former police officer. Her murder has never been solved. The gesture embodied the couple’s year-long project to turn the gritty lane into something beautiful; a reclamation of public space for the community, and an antidote to the banality of long lockdowns.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/first-came-the-wedding-then-…
# NSW, Coronavirus COVID-19, Gardens, yards, lawns, Neighbours."Stand on your two legs and say no more" - housing activism in the 1970s and 80's
Shane and Fiona (No paywall)Shane and Fiona interview Joan Doyle and Maureen Donnelly about housing activism in the 1970's and 1980's, where groups of people took direct action for housing justice, including squatting empty government housing, protesting at Parliament and lots of other creative forms of action. A great insight into the early days of HAAG and testimony to the change that can happen through people "standing on their two legs" to take their housing rights. (3CR 8.55am Community Radio)
https://www.3cr.org.au/haag/episode-202201261730/stand-your-two-…
# History, Audio Australia, Campaigns and law reform, Squatting.Industry stakeholders strike deal that could lead to pay rise for Australian aged care workers
Paul Karp The Guardian (No paywall)Aged care providers and unions have quietly struck a deal acknowledging the increased complexity and value of aged care work, a key step in a case seeking pay rises of up to 25%. ... The deal raises the pressure on the Morrison government by noting that whatever pay increase the Fair Work Commission orders, it should be “fully funded by the federal government and linked to transparency and accountability measures as to how funding is used”. ... Increased wages are needed to “to attract and retain the number of skilled workers needed to deliver safe and quality care” in an industry where minimum wages are less than the acute health sector for nurses and “significantly” less than for disability support workers.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/jan/29/industry-…
# Australia, Health, Housing market, Older people.There’s been an exodus from Australia’s cities to the regions. What does that mean for local economies?
Jessica Mizrahi The Guardian (No paywall)There are legitimate concerns about what a flood of internal migration means for regional economies. It puts pressure on infrastructure, wages and housing prices. However, it may also lift some regions out of the current tourist trap. It’s a much-needed sugar hit to encourage back both workers and businesses. After a long and hard two years, our regions deserve the sweetness.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/28/theres-bee…
# Australia, Housing market, Work, employment.