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
Another policy designed to worsen inequality
Michael Pascoe The New Daily (No paywall)Effective from today, banks, building societies and credit unions will not be permitted to accept mortgage applications from people born under the three astrological “fire” signs – Aries, Leo and Sagittarius. ... Meanwhile, yet another housing inquiry is under way, this time chaired by Sydney North Shore Liberal MP, Jason Falinski, who has declared a dislike of social housing and a belief that housing affordability is all about supply. It’s taken for granted that he’s a fan of maintaining the present negative gearing and capital gains tax settings. As explained by Peter Mares, author of No Place Like Home: Repairing Australia’s Housing Crisis and lead moderator at Monash University’s Cranlana Centre for Ethical Leadership, there have been some fine submissions but the inquiry is fated to be a crock ... Clarification: I made up the early stuff about mortgage birthday bingo. The rest, unfortunately, is factual.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2021/10/08/michael-pascoe-ine…
# Australia, Affordable housing, Housing market.Teenagers ‘charged for petty crimes’ locked up in NSW because of homelessness, report says
Cait Klly The Guardian (No paywall)Hundreds of adolescent offenders are being held in detention in New South Wales before they have been sentenced simply because they are homeless, a report has revealed. During the 2019 - 2020 financial year, 236 highly vulnerable adolescents were locked up before they had been sentenced because they had nowhere else to go, the report by the peak body for youth homelessness Yfoundations has shown.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/oct/08/teenagers-charge…
# NSW, Homelessness, Race and ethnicity, Young people.Homeless non-residents were given emergency housing during lockdown. That ends Monday
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Asylum seeker Cyril spent the past year sharing a scary, smelly and crowded room with 11 men, including “wild people, out of their minds on drugs” and recently released prisoners. Ineligible for government support, healthcare and public housing like all non-resident refugees, asylum seekers and foreign students, the room where other men shot up heroin was the only thing Cyril could afford. When the lockdown hit, even that was unaffordable. In a first for NSW, Cyril and another 19 non-residents were provided emergency accommodation funded by the state government in a Sydney apartment hotel for the duration of the lockdown. With that funding likely to stop on Monday, Grace Rullis, manager of homelessness services with non-profit The Haymarket Foundation, said they were doing everything they could “to make sure they don’t return to the streets once the lockdown ends”. “While their housing pathways remain uncertain, we are committed to making sure they remain safe.” Cyril and some other non-residents have been given another three months by Haymarket ...
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/homeless-non-residents-were-…
# NSW, Boarders and lodgers, Coronavirus COVID-19, State Government.Ombudsman makes double severe maladministration finding against London landlord
Nathaniel Barker Inside Housing (Paywall)A small London housing association has been hit with a rare double severe maladministration finding by the Housing Ombudsman after it left a resident living with damp and mould for two years. The arbitration service found severe maladministration in Inquilab Housing Association’s failure to respond to the resident’s request to deal with the problem and its subsequent complaint-handling. According to the resident, the leaks and outstanding repairs left her daughter’s bedroom unusable, damaging their belongings and impacting on their physical and mental health. Inquilab, which owns around 1,300 homes, was ordered to pay the resident £3,633 in compensation, prepare a detailed schedule of works to deal with outstanding repairs, and offer redress to reflect the damage to the resident’s possessions. It was also told to conduct a “senior management review” into why it failed to carry out the repairs and respond to the formal complaint despite multiple interventions from the ombudsman.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/ombudsman-makes-double…
# International, Public and community housing, Repairs, Mould.Only London’s highest earners able to rent privately at affordable cost, ONS says
Hilary Osbourne The Guardian (No paywall)Only the top 25% of earners in London were able to privately rent a property in the city at an affordable rate last year, according to official figures on costs across England. Data from the Office for National Statistics revealed that for three-quarters of households, rents in the capital were set at a level equal to more than 30% of their income.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/oct/06/london-rent-privat…
# International, Rent, Housing affordability.Profits over People: in-home care a cash bonanza for greedy aged providers
Sarah Russell (No paywall)A $53,000 home-care package gets just nine hours of support yet the government has slung suppliers an extra $6.5 billion. Dr Sarah Russell reports on aged care profiteers and finds self-management is the answer. The only aspect of in-home care for older people that makes the news is the ridiculously long queue for home care packages. Flying under the radar is the chronic rorting, with corporate providers skimming off vast profits. (Michael West Media)
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/profits-over-people-in-home-care-…
# Australia, Older people.Four in 10 new apartment buildings have major defects: NSW Building Commissioner
Tawar Razaghi Domain (No paywall)Almost four in 10 new apartment buildings in NSW have serious defects, costing an average $331,829 per building to fix, a new survey has found, although resolutions are rare. Waterproofing (23 per cent) was the most common major defect followed by fire safety (14 per cent), while almost one in 10 buildings had structural and enclosure defects, which can include anything that protects homeowners from the elements, such as the roof or the facade, according to new research by the Strata Community Association NSW. A survey of 1400 strata managers of residential buildings of four storeys or higher built in the past year was completed as part of a joint initiative between the Office of the NSW Building Commissioner and the state’s peak strata body.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/four-in-10-new-apartment-building…
# NSW, Repairs, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.‘I’d rather be on the street’: Homeless face return to unsafe rooming houses
Jewel Topsfield The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Dean Drommel would rather sleep rough than go back to living in a rooming house. Mr Drommel, one of the homeless Victorians from 2159 households currently put up in a hotel, is worried he will once again be referred to a private rooming house when lockdown ends and government funding is cut. "When you live in a rooming house and you go out to the shops and come home and the door has been kicked in and all your stuff’s been taken, it gets a bit much. You’re always on edge. I’d rather be on the street than going into a rooming house and getting into fights.” Mr Drommel is also worried about the spread of COVID-19 at rooming houses. “I’ve been hearing about it lately; ‘this place has got COVID, go and get tested’.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/i-d-rather-be-on-the-st…
# Australia, Boarders and lodgers, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.