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
‘Ultimately uninhabitable’: western Sydney’s legacy of planning failure
Anne Davies The Guardian (No paywall)Houses built to the fence line with dark roofs and tiny backyards leave their owners at the mercy of the climate crisis, experts say ... On 4 January 2020, the western Sydney suburb of Penrith was one of the hottest places on Earth at 48.9C. The heat that day, at the foot of the Blue Mountains, gave a brief window into what the future will be like in the city’s outer rings, soon to be home to more than 1.5 million people. Climate change is no longer looming. It’s here.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/16/ultimatel…
# NSW, Climate change, Housing market, Planning and development, State Government.We need to design housing for Indigenous communities that can withstand the impacts of climate change
Tess Lea, Arianna Brambilla, John Singer and Liam Grealy The Conversation (No paywall)Remote Indigenous communities in Australia will experience the impacts of climate change disproportionately to the rest of the country. ... A rapidly warming planet provides a significant challenge to design, deliver, and maintain habitable housing across Australia. Yet, few analyses consider Indigenous housing and climate change together.
https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-design-housing-for-indige…
# Australia, Housing market, Race and ethnicity.Spain takes on private equity landlords as cost of housing soars
Daniel Dombey (Paywall)Spain’s leftwing government is championing rent controls as property costs rise across Europe, part of a proposed housing law that it says will protect vulnerable tenants against investment funds and other big landlords. ... Ione Belarra, leader of the radical Podemos party that supports the bill, said it would right the balance in a sector transformed by the eurozone financial crisis over a decade ago and the arrival of institutional funds. Investment group Blackstone is now Spain’s biggest landlord. “The big investment funds saw a niche here to speculate in the housing business,” Belarra, who is also Spain’s social affairs minister, told the Financial Times in an interview. “Now we are beginning to put limits to this and say to the big landlords that they can keep doing housing business, but not at any price,” she added. “Not at the price that there are evictions, or that people have to pay more than 30 per cent of their income in rent.” Blackstone, which now owns close to 30,000 homes in Spain, declined to comment. (Financial Times)
https://www.ft.com/content/9ef1eb29-04a5-441f-ac77-f6a0fb7d2d85
# International, Eviction, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Dark roofs to be banned in NSW, planning minister says
Anne Davies and Elias Visontay The Guardian (No paywall)The NSW government will move to ban dark roofs as part of its push to deliver more sustainable housing and reach its target of net zero emissions by 2050. Speaking to the Committee for Sydney, planning minister Rob Stokes foreshadowed the policy switch to ensure all new housing has light-coloured roofing. He said recent University of NSW research commissioned by the federal government found Sydney’s ambient temperatures could be reduced by up to 2.4C if dark roofing was ditched across the city. A light coloured roof could reduce temperatures inside the home by up to 10 degrees during a heatwave. You can read a similar story by Angus Thompson in the 'Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/dark-roofs-ditched-commercial-buildings-must-be-net-zero-from-2022-nsw-planning-minister-20211117-p599pm.html]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/17/dark-roof…
# NSW, Climate change, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards, Planning and development, State Government.Accessibility reforms: “If you’ve got builders having to do one thing in NSW and another thing in Queensland it’s going to drive them nuts”
Duncan Murray The Fifth Estate (No paywall)It’s been more than 10 years since Australian government ministers agreed to pursue making homes more accessible for elderly and disabled people through provisions in the national building codes. In April of this year, measures including wider door frames and corridors, stepless entryways and showers, and reinforced bathroom walls finally found their way into the updated 2022 National Construction Code (NCC). However, with individual states and territories having the option to opt out of the changes the country is split, largely along political lines, as to who will step in to avoid them becoming state law.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/accessibi…
# Australia, Disability, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards, Older people.Closing the divide: essential workers, Australian cities and COVID-19
Alison Holloway, Julian Szafraniec, Merry Hoang and Marcia Keegan (No paywall)Essential workers have been keeping Australia’s cities moving during the COVID-19 pandemic – and the structure of our cities has put many in harm's way. Urban policy needs to adapt quickly to address the underlying inequalities across Australia’s spatial geographies. The COVID-19 pandemic has not affected Australians equally. Data clearly shows the pandemic has exacerbated underlying social and spatial inequalities throughout Australia; essential workers, in particular, have been hit hard by the pandemic. Urban policy needs to address pressing social and spatial inequalities before the divide becomes too wide to close.
https://www.sgsep.com.au/publications/insights/closing-the-divid…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Families, Housing market.Homebuyers allege underquoting is rife in real estate industry, but agents say it's just a hot market
Elias Clure ABC (No paywall)"There's an old adage: 'Quote them low, watch 'em go. Quote em high, watch them die.' A leopard never changes its spots." ... Consumer Affairs Victoria recently audited 29 real estate agencies after a tip-off from the public. It found that 17 of them were underquoting. ... [Buyer's advocate David Morrell believed] underquoting was part of the cultural fabric of realtors across the country and recent legislative changes attempting to crack down on the practice had failed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-15/alannah-attempted-to-beat…
# Australia, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Annual Report 2020-2021
Edinburgh Tenants Federation (No paywall)Check out what's happening in Edinburgh, Scotland ... Edinburgh Tenants Federation (ETF), the umbrella organisation of tenants’ and residents’ groups throughout Edinburgh is delighted to welcome you to our 2020 / 2021 Annual Report. ETF’s overall aim is to represent tenants throughout Edinburgh, ensuring tenant influence in housing policy and service
decisions with the City of Edinburgh Council (CEC) and Scottish Government.
https://www.scottishhousingnews.com/uploads/ETF%20Annual%20Repor…
# International, Rent, Campaigns and law reform.