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
'Extravagant' rental prices push more renters into temporary accommodation, accelerating homelessness
Keira Proust and Simon Lauder ABC (No paywall)New data shows rental house prices have dramatically increased in regional NSW over the past year, forcing more people out of the market and into temporary accommodation. Domain's 2021 June Quarter report found rental prices rose the most in the Snowy Mountains region — up by more than 28 per cent since last year — with the Byron Shire following close behind at 26 per cent and the Wingecarribee Shire by 20 per cent. It is something that Chris Rixon has felt on the NSW far-south coast after trying to move to the region from Melbourne two months ago. "We're in a caravan park at Pambula because there are no rentals in the valley," Mr Rixon said. ... Mr Rixon has been given a caravan by local charity the Social Justice Advocates to live in temporarily while he continues to look for permanent accommodation, but the Bega Valley region has also felt the spike in rental prices. It has increased by more than 12 per cent in the past year, up to a median price of $450 a week for a house, which chief executive officer of the state's Tenants' Union Leo Patterson Ross said was concerning. ... The Social Justice Advocates are currently raising money to help accommodate people sleeping rough, with the aim of raising $100,000 by the end of the year to get a new caravan set up. But the Tenants' Union said more needed to be done by both landlords and the state government to improve the situation, with too much of the responsibility currently falling to local charities.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/extravagant-rental-prices…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Land lease communities, Rent, Homelessness, Regional NSW, State Government.General Synod digest: more action taken to solve UK housing crisis
Pat Ashwoth (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The General Synod took steps to further the Church’s commitment to building decent, affordable housing by commending the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, as presented to it last year. ... [This sees] applying the assets we have to meet the housing needs of the marginalised and vulnerable.”... “Mission is finding out what God is doing, and joining in,” the Gloucester diocesan secretary said. "The Church had an opportunity to leave a tangible legacy, a positive statement on how to build sustainable housing.” (Church Times)
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/16-july/news/uk/gene…
# International, Public and community housing, Affordable housing.Scottish government allocates £3.2bn in affordable housing grant to local authorities
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)Councils in Scotland have been allocated a share of more than £3.2bn in grant funding to spend on affordable housing supply over the next five years. ... The funding is allocated to councils via the government’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme and can be used by councils to plan and deliver affordable homes, including in partnership with registered social landlords. ... The funding comes as the newly re-elected Scottish government aims to fulfil its promise of delivering 100,000 affordable homes over the next decade ... with at least 70% of these for social rent.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/scottish-government-allocat…
# International, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Local Government.The climate crisis will create two classes: those who can flee, and those who cannot
Peter Gleick The Guardian (No paywall)Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in low coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. That number could reach a billion by 2050
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/07/global-hea…
# International, Climate change.Why we need engineers who study ethics as much as maths
S Travis Waller, Kourosh Kayvani, Lucy Marshall and Robert F Care The Conversation (No paywall)The recent apartment building collapse in Miami, Florida, is a tragic reminder of the huge impacts engineering can have on our lives. Disasters such as this force engineers to reflect on their practice and perhaps fundamentally change their approach. Specifically, we should give much greater weight to ethics when training engineers.
https://theconversation.com/why-we-need-engineers-who-study-ethi…
# Australia, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Buying a house cheaper than renting for a third of the country
Sue Lannin ABC (No paywall)More than one third of Australian properties are cheaper to buy than rent, with loan repayments lower than renting in nearly all regional areas of the Northern Territory. In a new report, CoreLogic found repaying a home loan is now cheaper than paying rent on just over 36 per cent of Australian homes because of record low interest rates.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-15/housing-property-rents-ec…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market.Landlords Are Going to Take Away All Your Wage Gains
Hamilton Nolan (No paywall)From the United States ... Economic crises can happen fast. So can the printing of government stimulus checks to counteract those crises. But building large quantities of housing — to say nothing of affordable housing — is a slow process, beset on all sides by angry neighbors, predatory developers and a general lack of political will. And so Americans emerging from a devastating pandemic find ourselves facing a wry, ironic sort of recovery. The good news is that wages are going up. The bad news is, you’ll have to give them all back to your landlord. ... Landlords large and small are in a dream situation. The combination of rising wages and housing shortages means they can simply adjust rents upwards forever until they have effectively redirected every last bit of outstanding economic growth into their own pockets. Though mega-billionaires and soulless global corporations have (rightfully) replaced them as the primary moneyed villains of a democratic society, landlords are now poised to make a strong comeback as class war enemies in the public mind. (In These Times)
https://inthesetimes.com/article/landlords-housing-stimulus-rent…
# International, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Rents rise at fastest pace since January 2009
Euan Black The New Daily (No paywall)National rents reported their fastest annual growth in more than a decade last financial year. Data released by CoreLogic on Monday shows national rents soared 6.6 per cent as the economic recovery beat expectations and record amounts of government stimulus flowed into Australian bank accounts. House rents increased in all capital cities over the financial year and unit rents rose in all capital cities except Sydney and Melbourne, which were affected by an oversupply of apartments and a lack of migrants due to international border closures. But the largest rent hikes were seen in regional Australia. Taryn Paris in the Urban Developer writes about the same issue at: [https://www.theurbandeveloper.com/articles/regional-rental-prices-outpace-cities].
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2021/07/19/rents-fas…
# Australia, Rent, Housing market, Regional NSW.