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
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.Build-to-rent apartments in Denman Prospect aim to relieve Canberra's housing shortage
Harry Frost and Markus Mannheim ABC (No paywall)Canberra has had the highest rental prices of all capital cities for almost a year. ... National Shelter, a housing lobby group, said the ACT market was particularly horrific for poorer renters, as they must compete with much higher-paid Canberrans. The group's executive officer, Adrian Pisarski, said the city's relatively high incomes masked "a terrible situation for low-income households, by pushing average affordability higher while it remained shockingly unaffordable for people on low incomes". A solution — for a small number of tenants, at least — is on the horizon. Unveiled in the territory this week was the latest "build-to-rent" project: housing complexes dedicated to renters.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-12-07/new-housing-aims-to-relie…
# Australia, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market.Is your neighbourhood underinsured? Search our map to find out
Kate Isabel Booth The Conversation (No paywall)Underinsurance is more common than many realise. And if you live in an area where most people don’t have enough home and/or contents insurance, the financial and social catastrophe that follows a disaster can be community-wide. ... Renters often don’t have contents insurance. The data show that a poorer suburb with a high rate of rental properties will likely be the most underinsured. ... it is housing tenure (whether someone owns or rents) that contributes most significantly to the patterns seen in the map. ... As property values have climbed, many Australians have been priced out of home ownership and driven into long-term renting. And as rents go up, more of the household budget is spent on rental payments. When households are under financial stress, they are more likely to drop insurance. The end result is a lot of renters don’t have contents insurance. [And] Climate-exacerbated disasters are also driving changes in the affordability and availability of house and/or contents insurance. Together, these trends in housing, renting, climate change and insurance could potentially create new pockets of entrenched disadvantage.
https://theconversation.com/is-your-neighbourhood-underinsured-s…
# Australia, Rent, Climate change, Families, Home ownership.House values soar by $2 trillion since start of pandemic
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The Reserve Bank has left itself room to start normalising the cost of mortgages as record-low interest rates helped drive Australian house values up by $2 trillion since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/rba-sits-tight-over-chri…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.They bought a puppy for their son in lockdown. Strata did something ‘absurd’
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)When health worker Georgia Dawson applied for permission to keep her dog in her apartment, she was stunned to be told her building was considering imposing a bond on all pet owners of $2000.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/they-bought-a-puppy-for-the…
# Hot topic NSW, Strata, Families, Pets, State Government.