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
Remaining Miami apartment building to be demolished, nearby units evacuated after review
ABC (No paywall)Worries have intensified over the past week that the damaged structure could come tumbling down on its own, endangering the crews below and complicating the search for victims. ... Meanwhile, residents of a North Miami Beach high-rise loaded clothes and valuables into suitcases, laundry baskets and wagons and wheeled them to waiting cars after they were forced to evacuate the building when it was found to be unsafe. An audit prompted by the collapse of Champlain Towers South in nearby Surfside found that the 156-unit Crestview Towers in North Miami Beach, about 8 kilometres away, had been deemed structurally and electrically unsafe in January ... Check out further reports on Champlain Towers South and Crestview Towers at: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/03/miami-condo-collapse-board-debate] and at: [https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/another-florida-apartment-tower-declared-unsafe-evacuated-20210703-p586iz.html]. ... and the latest news at: [https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/demolition-crews-take-over-from-rescuers-at-collapsed-florida-tower-20210704-p586qj.html]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/miami-building-demolition…
# International, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Opposing view: a homeless man’s million-dollar vista
Frank Robson The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Sam’s tent faces east across the sea towards a gap between two offshore islands. On the best days, when the air is clear and light winter westerlies smooth the water, the blue-black ridges of the islands are etched sharply against the sky and everything appears closer than it is. At other times, great banks of cloud roll in from the south bringing squalls that whip up dangerous waves and cloak the islands behind columns of hard-driving rain. ... A ridge behind his campsite is lined with expensive glass-fronted homes and apartments, and some of the owners aren’t happy about Sam enjoying the same views as them.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/opposing-view-a-homeless-man-s-m…
# Australia, Homelessness, Personal stories.Construction watchdog: Body corporates are not reporting known defects
Matt O'Sullivan The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The NSW construction watchdog has major concerns that body corporates are underreporting serious defects in high-rise apartment buildings to government officials charged with cleaning up the construction industry and restoring public confidence. A survey of more than 500 buildings in NSW built in the past six years found that 36 per cent had serious defects. Of those with defects, just 17 per cent of the buildings had already been reported to the regulator.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/construction-watchdog-body-c…
# NSW, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Paris court fines Airbnb $9.6 million for illegal listings
Romain Dillet (No paywall)A court in Paris has fined Airbnb, the popular marketplace for vacation rentals. According to the court, the tech company has failed to comply with local regulation when it comes to listing your apartment on the platform. Airbnb should pay $9.6 million (€8.08 million) to the city of Paris. This decision has been years in the making. Like many major cities around the world, Airbnb has had some impact on the housing market in Paris. Many apartments disappeared from the housing market as they became full-time Airbnb apartments, leading to high rents. (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/01/paris-court-fines-airbnb-9-6-m…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Short-term holiday letting.Chinese foreign investors have cooled on Australian properties, but overseas buyers are tipped to return
Nssim Khadem ABC (No paywall)Chinese foreign investors who abandoned the Australian property market last financial year could soon return, according to real estate agents and analysts who say enquiries and sales are on the rise. But they predict Australian property is likely to be a more attractive option for overseas buyers who want to move here and buy land or large homes when our borders reopen, rather than foreign investors who face high taxes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-02/chinese-overseas-buyers-a…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Australia’s housing FOMO is more contagious than COVID
Elizabeth Knight The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Regulators haven’t yet started to roll out a vaccine for Australia’s other pandemic - the highly infectious fear of missing out on property ownership - which has resulted in annual price growth more rapid than anything seen in almost two decades. The most infectious variant is house ownership ...
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/australia-s-…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.Public housing residents relocated under Victorian government program fear uncertainty
Ahmed Yussuf ABC (No paywall)Hadia Komba spends almost four hours each day travelling from her new home in Werribee to get her kids to and from school in Flemington. She recently took the option to relocate her family of seven, including her five children, out of their three-bedroom public housing flat to a four-bedroom house. ... They were moved to Werribee as part of the Victorian government's $31.7 million tower relocation program. The voluntary program was offered to 420 high-rise public housing tenants assessed as being at greatest risk from coronavirus.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-04/melbourne-public-housing-…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19, State Government.Housing Ombudsman publishes full details of 350 decisions against landlords
Tim Clark Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... In a bid to increase transparency, the ombudsman has published more than 350 individual cases covering a range of issues including repairs, anti-social behaviour and complaint-handling. The outcomes included areas where the ombudsman found cases of maladministration, no issue and those where an incident had gone wrong but the landlord was not deemed not to have addressed it appropriately. According to the ombudsman, the decisions provide an ever-expanding resource to promote learning, fairness and accountability in the sector. The cases cover dozens of landlords and include details of incidents where housing associations have been forced to pay tenants for inadequately responding to anti-social behaviour claims, failing to deal with leaks in properties and removing gas pipes without informing residents.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/housing-ombudsman-publishes…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Landlords and agents.