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
Rental prices tipped to rise as vacancies hit multi-year low
Kate Burke The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Renters are facing fewer options when it comes to choosing their next home, with vacancies at their lowest level in years and expected to drop further as international borders reopen. Competition for rentals – which held the national vacancy rate at a multi-year low of 1.5 per cent in November – is expected to increase, along with prices, as international students and migrants return to Australia, experts say. It is already a landlord’s market in most cities ...
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/rental-prices-tipped-to-ris…
# Australia, Rent, Housing market, International.Booming house prices drive fourfold increase in size of inheritances to $120bn a year
Paul Karp The Guardian (No paywall)Booming housing wealth, unspent superannuation and lower fertility are increasing the size of Australians’ inheritances, according to the Productivity Commission. Despite helping the rich get richer, inheritances are nevertheless shrinking relative inequality by giving a bigger boost to poorer households’ wealth, the government thinktank found in a report released on Tuesday. You will find a link to this report at: [https://www.pc.gov.au/research/completed/wealth-transfers]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/dec/07/australia…
# Australia, Families, Home ownership.The Guardian view on homelessness: don’t cast everyone out again
Editorial (No paywall)When the elements turn hostile, we are more than ever dependent on the roofs over our heads. ... [And, indeed] for those without a safe place to shelter, extreme weather is an ordeal to be endured. Last week, the Liverpool Echo reported on complaints about a local McDonald’s that refused to sell hot food to a woman who wanted it for a homeless man she met outside in pouring rain. Starting in March last year, the Everyone In scheme saw 37,000 rough sleepers offered emergency accommodation, much of it in hotels. But since the initial instruction to councils to take people off the streets, the guidance has been diluted. ...
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/dec/05/the-guardi…
# International, Homelessness, Housing market.Outasite Lite
Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)Land Lease Communities Act Review Recommendations Report ... In this issue of Outasite Lite we take you through some of the key recommendations from the report.
https://mailchi.mp/tenants.org.au/land-lease-communities-act-rev…
# NSW, Land lease communities, Campaigns and law reform.Drop in homelessness amid pandemic ‘social experiment’ spurs push for payments boost
Michael Fowler The Age (Paywall)Homelessness, which fell last year on the back of raised welfare payments, is now more prevalent than it was before the pandemic. An analysis of federal data by Homelessness Australia, to be released on Tuesday, reveals that in May last year, the first full month after the JobSeeker payment doubled, the number of Australians requiring homelessness support dropped about 5 per cent, from 91,672 to 87,301. JobSeeker was cut back in September last year, and by May this year 93,726 people were claiming homelessness support, a 7 per cent increase on the number before the pandemic. “The sector has been saying for years now that increasing income support would reduce homelessness, and now we have the evidence that proves it,” said Jenny Smith, the chair of Homelessness Australia, who described the JobSeeker boost as a “social experiment of sorts”.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/drop-in-homelessness-amid-pan…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Welfare.The value of the Austins’ home jumped by $500k - when a white friend posed as the homeowner
Jonathon Edwards The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)From the United States ... Paul Austin said he felt good as the property valuer roamed his Northern California home, ticking off some of the $US400,000 worth of improvements he and his wife had made to the house. The valuer noted the new fireplace, Austin told a California state reparations taskforce in October, mentioned a room they’d added and complimented the view from the new deck. So Austin and his wife were shocked when the valuer pegged the estimate of their Marin City home in the San Francisco Bay area at $US995,000 ($1.4 million), far lower than previous appraisals. “It was a slap in the face,” Austin told KGO-TV in February. Austin and his wife, Tenisha Tate-Austin decided to get another opinion three weeks later, they say in a lawsuit they filed last week in federal court in San Francisco. This time, they enlisted the help of their white friend Jan who agreed to pretend to be the homeowner for a different valuer, the lawsuit alleges. ...
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/the-value-of-the-aust…
# International, Housing market, Race and ethnicity.The Answer To Our Lack Of Affordable Housing Is Boarding Rooms, According To This Shitty Policy
Soaliha Iqbal (No paywall)Just when you couldn’t feel more frustrated about Sydney’s lack of affordable housing, developers and state governments are posing yet another shitty ‘fix’ to the problem: depressingly small boarding rooms. A new affordable housing policy expects to ask essential workers like nurses, teachers and fire fighters — you know, the foundations of our society — to live in tiny, 12 square metre boarding rooms with communally shared amenities in its bid to make living near their place of work more affordable. Which to me sounds like a very diplomatic way of saying essential workers should slum it in shitty, tiny homes or not work in expensive areas. (Pedestrian)
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/tiny-boarding-rooms-for-essential…
# NSW, Affordable housing, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards, Planning and development, State Government, Work, employment.Where's the respect for meeting your rental payments for a lifetime?
Kate Kelly ABC (No paywall)Kate Kelly from Hobartians Facing Homelessness says there's now respect for renters no matter how reliable. She's paid around $150,000 in rent over her lifetime. As a single Mum with a dog she finds she's the last person on a landlord's list. Would a card that proves how reliable you are as a renter change this? (ABC Breakfast)
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/hobart/programs/breakfast/kate-kell…
# Audio Australia, Rent, Homelessness, Landlords and agents.