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
Warnings NSW stamp duty reforms could distort the property market
Matt Wade The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Legal and accounting professionals have criticised the Berejiklian government’s strategy to replace stamp duty with an annual land tax warning the slow transition to the new scheme may distort the property market and sap the state’s coffers.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/warnings-nsw-stamp-duty-refo…
# NSW, Housing market, State Government, Tax.Remote Housing Court Hearings Strain Internet-Deprived Tenants Taking on Landlords
Claudia Irizarry Aponte (No paywall)From the United States ... For the past seven months, 40-year-old Maricela Catalán has been pleading her case against her former landlord in Bronx Housing Court from her current living room. She has tuned in online 10 times via Microsoft Teams with a hotspot and laptop lent by a tenant organizer to press a claim that landlord Sam Applegrad illegally locked her out of her prior apartment in Mott Haven last year. The city’s housing courts have largely shut in-person operations during the pandemic — freezing eviction proceedings entirely until earlier this year and moving urgent cases concerning building conditions almost wholly online. (The City) [Read on ...]
https://www.thecity.nyc/platform/amp/bronx/2021/4/13/22378833/re…
# International, Eviction, Rent, Tribunal NCAT, Coronavirus COVID-19.Long-term rental licenses for Denver’s landlords going in front of a council committee
Conrad Swanson (Paywall)From the United States ... By one estimate, Denver has about 54,000 homes, condos, row houses and apartment complexes that are rented out. A new proposal before the City Council would require landlords to pay for long-term licenses for each property. (Denver Post)
https://www.denverpost.com/2021/04/14/denver-long-term-rental-li…
# International, Rent, Landlords and agents.Big housing for who?
Katelyn Butterss (No paywall)Katelyn Butterss from the Victorian Public Tenants Association talks to Shane and Fiona about the Vic government's so-called 'big housing spend' and proposed ten-year housing strategy - the good, the bad, and the just plain missing in the state's housing policy.
https://www.3cr.org.au/haag/episode-202103241730/big-housing-who
# Audio Australia, Public and community housing, Housing affordability, State Government.Island homes: Tasmania election campaign offers few solutions to state’s housing crisis
Amanda Ducker The Guardian (No paywall)With the Covid moratorium on evictions and rent increases and the national rental affordability scheme both ending, another wave of housing stress is swelling. ... David, an out-of-work welder from Alice Springs who slept in his car, planned to vote Labor because he always did. Tex, who slept near the Royal Hobart Hospital in case he had another epileptic seizure or major cardiac event, said he had not voted since the 1980s. Gavin, who was waiting out a two-hour lag between his emergency overnight accommodation closing at 7am and a sister day space opening, did not plan to vote either. What was the point, he wondered, peering out into the bleakness.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/apr/18/island-ho…
# Australia, Homelessness, Housing market, State Government.Highly coveted Sydney suburbs record double-digit rent declines: Domain
Tawar Razaghi Domain (No paywall)Renters are starting to return to inner-city areas a year after the pandemic hit, taking advantage of cheaper prices in once highly coveted suburbs, new data reveals. Although overall Sydney house rents held at record levels of $550 per week in the March quarter, according to the latest Domain Rent Report, in a string of postcodes from the inner west to the city and eastern suburbs, rents have posted double-digit declines in the past year.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/highly-coveted-sydney-suburbs-rec…
# NSW, Rent, Housing market.Immigrant town
Samuel Yang ABC (No paywall)“Am I going to be OK there in Australia? Am I going to be able to learn the language and make friends and fit into the community?” These are some of the questions Iraqi refugee Zinah al-Haidari was asking herself as her family prepared to move 13,000 kilometres around the world to New South Wales back in 2013. ... But Liverpool is also a suburb of New South Wales situated some 27 kilometres south-west of the Sydney CBD. With more than 120 ethnicities and 140 languages spoken, Liverpool is one of the most multicultural places in Australia — more than half of its residents were born overseas, hailing from places as diverse as Iraq, Vietnam, Fiji, India and Lebanon. [Read on]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-17/liverpool-migrants-why-ne…
# NSW, Families, Housing market, Personal stories, Race and ethnicity.Bega Valley Shire Council asks home owners to rent vacant holiday properties as NSW faces housing shortage
Keira Proust ABC (No paywall)When family psychologist Terra Harrison decided to take the plunge and move from Newcastle to the sleepy seaside town of Eden on the NSW Far South Coast, she realised some "out of the box" thinking was needed to find a place to live. Ms Harrison had decided to move her family to the region for a "tree change," and to help deliver more mental health support services to regional NSW. But she said it was concerning to see only two viable rental options on the market when trying to move.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-17/bega-valley-council-says-…
# NSW, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market, Regional NSW.