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
The verdict is in: George Osborne’s help-to-buy scheme has been an utter disaster
Polly Tornbee The Guardian (No paywall)According to a damning Lords report, it isn’t just a waste of £29bn, it has made Britain’s unequal housing market even worse. ... So it shouldn’t be a surprise that a shocking report on a Conservative flagship housing policy fell below the news radar. The Lords-built environment committee has revealed that all of the £29bn spent on the help-to-buy scheme has been wasted. The scheme gives subsidies for homeownership, but all they do is “inflate prices by more than their subsidy value”. They “do not provide good value for money”, which would be “better spent on increasing housing supply.” ... Bringing up a family in a private-rented home means living under the shadow of eviction, with private landlords using section 21 orders to evict tenants for no reason. I once followed the misfortunes of one family that was forced to move, time and again, sometimes having to move their children’s schools too, often living in squalor, once through a long winter with a broken boiler. They weren’t destitute, both parents were in work, but their children were deprived of a permanent home in their early years. Last month’s excoriating report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on private renting found that in 29,000 instances in one year, “households were, or were at risk of being made homeless following an eviction that was not their fault”.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/25/george-osb…
# International, Rent, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housing market, No-grounds evictions.Maximising for coolth: How a popular Sydney park will create its own cool microclimate
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Coolth. The word isn’t used as often as warmth. That could change with a $6 million pilot project – thought to be a world first – that will use artificial intelligence to reduce summer temperatures at a major Sydney park by up to four degrees compared to the surrounding precinct. Under the project, Bicentennial Park’s 40 hectares in Sydney Olympic Park will become a cooler microclimate, a green respite for the 80,000 people who by 2023 will live or work there every day.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/maximising-for-coolth-how-a-…
# NSW, Climate change, Planning and development.Rate rises may slow housing market but no affordability improvement in sight
Jennifer Duke The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Earlier than expected interest rate rises are unlikely to dramatically hit the housing market and economists and housing analysts say affordability will continue to be a concern in Sydney and Melbourne. ... The rapid rise in property values has resulted in unions, social welfare groups, property industry organisations and housing providers creating a new National Affordable Housing Alliance calling on the federal, state and territory governments to develop social and affordable housing across the country. The group’s members include the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Australian Council of Social Service, Industry Super Australia, Housing Industry Association, Master Builders Australia, the Property Council of Australia, National Shelter, Homelessness Australia and the Community Housing Industry Association. The proposal includes new tax offsets to encourage institutional investment in affordable housing, a $20 billion Social and Affordable Housing Future Fund to deliver enough supply of homes, support build-to-rent housing and change state and territory planning to divert a portion of infrastructure contributions and levies paid by developers into providing social housing.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/rate-rises-may-slow-hous…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Housing affordability, Housing market, Planning and development.Even pricey city-centre flats help everyone move up the property ladder
Torsten Bell The Guardian (No paywall)High housing costs are a disaster for living standards, costing private renters more than 30% of their income and giving London the highest poverty rate in the UK. The economists’ answer is to build more homes in high-cost areas, but that’s easier said than done. Developments are often opposed from the right, for reducing local house prices, and the left, as gentrification. Opponents accurately say city-centre developers build for richer customers. But the lasting impact of construction goes beyond the immediate effect of who moves into that property, with the new owner moving out of their existing home and creating an opportunity for someone else. As that continues, it means building in one area can help reduce costs elsewhere. But does that happen in practice?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/even-price…
# International, Housing market.How co-operative housing gave me the peace of mind I thought I’d never find
Rosie Collington The Guardian (No paywall)Denmark’s system offers tenants a chance to escape grasping landlords and own an affordable stake in a community ... Across many countries, and big cities in particular, the prospect of homeownership or access to socially rented housing is a pipe dream. Median house prices have risen to more than seven times median incomes in the Anglo-Saxon economies. In the UK, the proportion of 25- to 35-year-olds on middle incomes who owned a home plummeted from two-thirds to just one-quarter between 1996 and 2016. Meanwhile, the costs of renting, from Sydney to San Francisco, have soared. Then, in July 2021, I moved with my Danish partner into one of Copenhagen’s many andelsboliger, a co-operatively owned block of flats where we neither have a landlord nor pay rent, and which is not subject to market prices. Today, about 7% of the Danish population live in a form of co-operatively owned housing – and it accounts for one-third of the housing stock in Copenhagen. It soon became clear to me that there’s a lot that other countries could learn.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/23/cooperativ…
# International, Public and community housing, Housing market, International.English Island Seeks a Landlord-King Who Likes Solitude, Seals and Beer
Alan Yuhas The Guardian (No paywall)Overseeing a small island dominated by a castle, seals and a pub, an English council is searching for a new king or queen. ... The job listing, posted last week by the Barrow Borough Council in Cumbria, is technically seeking someone to run the pub on Piel Island, half a mile off England’s northwestern coast. Winters are wet, travel is limited and an eccentric tradition of naming a king survives at the island’s old pub.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/22/world/europe/piel-island-uk.h…
# International, Landlords and agents.‘Everyone In’ court challenge fails despite judge highlighting ‘elusiveness’ to government messaging
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... A legal challenge against the government over its scheme to house rough sleepers during the pandemic has been unsuccessful, with the judge stating the debate “belongs in the arenas of public opinion and politics” rather than the courts. In a judgement published this week, a High Court judge said there was an “elusiveness” and “ambiguity” in the government’s communication on the "Everyone In" initiative, but rejected the claim that ministers had acted unlawfully. The judicial review, which was heard at the Royal Courts of Justice in December, was brought forward by a former rough sleeper with no recourse to public funds who was refused accommodation from Camden Council in March last year.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/everyone-in-court-chal…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Local Government.Coffs Harbour homeless crisis as housing issues grip Bellingen, Nambucca
Danielle Gusmaroli Daily Telegraph (Paywall)The contrast between the multimillion-dollar pristine houses of Coffs Harbours Sapphire Beach and the shocking environs of “tent city,” which more and more of the region’s growing number of homeless call home, is so stark it’s disorientating. ... Where just 15 people a day came when it first opened three years ago, that figure has ballooned to 70 individuals who head to Pete’s to eat, shower and use the legal and mental health facilities. Nearby, hidden in Coffs Central Shopping Centre’s multistorey car park, retired butcher David Willcox, 66, strains an ear to tune his transistor radio and settles on the 10pm news, reclined in his silver Nissan Tilda. ... The Mid Coast Tenants Advice & Advocacy Service recorded a 95 per cent hike in people with paid employment or business income on the Mid North Coast calling for help in the year ending January 2022. “I‘ve seen an increase in desperation and couch surfing,” said service team leader Emma McGuire.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/nsw/coffs-harbour-homeles…
# NSW, Rent, Homelessness, Housing market, Personal stories, Regional NSW.