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
A Poor Knock: Colbeck carousing at the cricket amid aged care crisis just tip of incompetence iceberg
Sarah Russell (No paywall)Failure to protect Federal aged care residents has left 389 elderly Australians dead this year alone, and 40% of private nursing homes locked down. Dr Sarah Russell reports on the government’s devastating failure as the Covid aged care crisis grips. (Michael West Media)
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/a-poor-knock-colbeck-carousing-at…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health, Housing market, Older people.Join the dots for housing policy failure
Michael Pascoe The New Daily (No paywall)Near-stagnant national social housing investment, Sydney’s median house price hits $1.6 million, a shortage of building materials, soaring rents, worsening affordability – join the dots of this week’s stories to see monumental government policy failure. And, at least at the federal level, we’re set for more of the same, by the smell of the latest housing inquiry. There are multiple factors at play in the housing crisis facing the third of Australians who rent, but the biggest elephant in the room is the ideological preferencing of profit-driven private sector delivery of social necessities. The results of letting for-profit private operators loose on aged care have been well documented. We have become somewhat inured to the same neoliberal commitment to “can-do capitalism” wreaking havoc in housing. The multi-decade decline of government housing has been matched by the increasingly expensive subsidising of private landlords – and not just through the tax system’s negative gearing and capital gains tax discount. On the surface, the $5.3 billion in Commonwealth Rent Assistance payments last financial year went to low-income renters, but in reality it flowed to private landlords, propping up rental prices at the lower end of the market but still leaving nearly half of CRA recipients in rental stress – paying more than 30 per cent of their low incomes for shelter. And that is worsening as colliding policies and COVID fallout push rents sharply higher, especially in regional centres ... [Read on]
https://thenewdaily.com.au/opinion/2022/01/28/michael-pascoe-hou…
# Must read Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Affordable housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, Federal Government, Landlords and agents, Older people, Tax, Welfare.Garry sleeps in his van because his pay doesn't cover rent and food in regional NSW
ABC (No paywall)Instead of driving home from work, Garry Wallis sets up his van in a suburban car park and settles in for the night. Due to housing shortages and high rent costs he's not the only one, and it's having an impact on employment as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYUgiYxYd_c&ab_channel=ABCNews%2…
# Video NSW, Homelessness, Regional NSW, Work, employment.Sydney’s sea and tree changers push regional house prices to record highs
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)House prices in pockets of regional NSW are rising at a faster rate than in Sydney, as ongoing demand from sea and tree changers pushes prices to record heights. Prices across a string of local government areas have jumped by more than a third year-on-year, new Domain figures for the December quarter reveal.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/sydney-s-sea-and-tree-chang…
# NSW, Housing market, Regional NSW.‘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.