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 Land-Hoarding Elite Should Be Paying the Rest of Us Rent
Philip Goff (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... If you want to change things in a democracy, you need to persuade people. If you want to bring about radical change, you have to find ways of embedding radical policies in the common-sense morality of the average person. High taxes on the wealthy, for example, will never be voted in whilst taxation is seen by many in the UK as ‘the government taking our money off us’. ... I think there is a way of inspiring popular support for radical change. All it requires is a sustained focus on the blatant injustices in our current model of land ownership. ... Half of England is owned by just 1% of the population ... [whilst] individual homeowners hold just 5% of the country’s land, while the aristocracy owns 30%. (Novara Media)
https://novaramedia.com/2021/12/29/the-land-hoarding-elite-shoul…
# International, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.Johnson has a chance to end homelessness now – if he dares to seize it
Simon Hattenstone and Daniel Lavelle The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... [Gyula Remes's] death (the second in 10 months in the same underpass) sparked outrage in parliament. The next day, the then secretary of state for housing, communities and local government James Brokenshire ... told parliament: “Every death of someone sleeping rough on our streets is one too many. Each is a tragedy, each a life cut short. We have a moral duty to act.” However well-intentioned Brokenshire’s words, the government reneged on this duty. In 2019, the number of deaths among homeless people in England and Wales rose for the fifth year in a row to a record high of 778. Meanwhile, the number of people who were entirely homeless or living in temporary accommodation and hostels in England soared to 280,000 in 2019 from a low of 40,000 in 2009 and 2010.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/28/boris-john…
# International, Federal Government, Homelessness.NSW social housing renewal program dwarfed by Victoria, Queensland
Lucy Cormack The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)A 2016 state government plan to build 23,000 social housing properties in 10 years has so far delivered less than 2 per cent of its target as the number of people on the housing waiting list surpasses 53,000. ... [And] a recent report into the impacts of COVID-19 on housing argues NSW is falling behind states such as Victoria and Queensland, which have made unprecedented funding pledges for social housing construction in response to the pandemic. ... Respectively, the states will contribute a net additional 8300 and 4300 social homes, but NSW will add only 402 homes in the same period, according to government data obtained for the report through a freedom of information request.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/nsw-social-housing-renewal-p…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Housing market.Is this your house? Corley photographic collection of Queensland houses needs your help
Sally Eeles ABC (No paywall)2813 Ipswich Road in Darra is not officially an address anymore — just a patch of grass beside the busy Ipswich Motorway in Brisbane's south-west. But delve into the State Library of Queensland's (SLQ) Corley Explorer website and you'll discover that in the 1960s it was the site of a cherished family home, built after work and on weekends by English immigrant George Brown for his wife Margaret and their daughters. Mr Brown made the bricks, built the walls, the floors and did all the carpentry, electrical and plumbing work. It is just one of the stories sparked by a single black-and-white picture, taken by the late photographic duo Frank and Eunice Corley more than 50 years ago.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-28/corley-explorer-photograp…
# History Australia, Home, Home ownership.Young family leaves the rat race of Canberra property market for tiny house living in NSW
Niki Burnside ABC (No paywall)Laura and Jack Harris were renting in Canberra with their four-year-old daughter when they realised it would be years before they could buy their own home. he Harris family was competing in a rental market higher than any other capital city while facing rising property prices. Keen to save and have some hope of one day owning their own residence, they made a radical decision. "The prices in Canberra are so high that we couldn't save for a deposit," Laura Harris said. "We saw living in a tiny house as a way out." They invested in their small home on wheels, a choice that enabled them to start paying less for a roof over their head. But the change also meant leaving Canberra for a property over the border in Murrumbateman, sharing land with Laura's parents.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-27/family-leaves-canberra-re…
# Australia, Affordable housing, Housing market.Why this year’s Sydney property market is one for the record books
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)“It’s really been the year when we re-imagined the space in our houses and apartments,” says Domain chief of research and economics Nicola Powell. “We wanted to have areas in our homes where we could work and, spending so much time indoors during lockdowns, we wanted more living space where we weren’t all on top of each other. “That’s really driven a lot of the price growth of houses over that of apartments.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/why-this-year-s-sydney-prop…
# NSW, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.Highest Singapore Rents in Six Years Fuel Expat Housing Woes
Faris Moktar (No paywall)Singapore residents bemoaning expensive home prices now have something else to worry about: rising rents. Rents have jumped to a six-year high, and analysts anticipate further increases as demand outweighs supply. That’s adding to costs for residents of the financial hub, especially expatriates, at a time when inflationary pressures are building. (Bloomberg Wealth)
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-27/highest-singa…
# International, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.I moved to the coast for a better life – now I’m back in London where I belong
Laura Barton The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... Last spring, just when everyone else was fleeing the capital, I was returning, hungry for all its glorious chaos. Most days I would walk along the coast road, past the bungalows facing the Channel, where the sea was implacably grey, and the gardens so neatly plotted that the space between each tulip, each daffodil, seemed to have been measured with graticule precision. Each day I would ask myself: “What am I doing here?” I had left London in the summer of 2014. Having flirted with the idea of moving to Los Angeles, instead I chose the Kent coast, then in the early flush of regeneration. I was looking for something that felt more like a community, close enough for creativity to mingle. Somewhere, perhaps, to finally feel settled. But last spring, I returned to London – sneaking back into the city just as everyone else seemed to be heading the other way. [Read on]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/28/moved-coas…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Home.