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
The Tasmanian town of Kingston is booming, but at what cost?
Kate Ainsworth ABC (No paywall)Roy Maynard has called the southern Tasmanian town of Kingston home for nearly 30 years, but has been forced out due to skyrocketing rents. The Aboriginal elder was homeless for eight months after leaving the town last year, and with nowhere else to go, he moved in with his daughter and her family in the nearby town of Geeveston.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-30/kingston-tasmania-populat…
# Australia, Rent, Housing affordability, Housing market.The Australian public purse is already pumping big money into housing – just not where it’s needed
Hal Pawson The Guardian (No paywall)The imbalance in public support of housing is not only socially unjust, it also hugely distorts our whole housing system. ousing once again looks set to form a major bone of contention in the coming general election. That much was clear from the ALP’s recent budget response. Labor had already backed the Coalition’s first homeowner initiatives. But opposition leader Anthony Albanese’s budget reply pledge to ramp up social and affordable housebuilding marked a clear point of difference from the government. This was not difficult to achieve. Despite ongoing increases in housing affordability stress over the past decade in many cities and regions, successive Liberal National governments have presided over a continuing dearth of non-market housebuilding. In his stock response to calls for post-Covid social housing stimulus, housing minister Michael Sukkar has time and again washed his hands of the issue by declaring it purely a state and territory responsibility. ... What is needed above all in Australia is unequivocal ownership of the housing affordability challenge by our national government as well as by states and territories. Only then could the country set a course towards a more balanced and equitable housing system to the benefit of all.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/may/24/the-public…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing market, Tax.No home left behind!
Leo Patterson Ross Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)... would you intentionally design a type of home that is so small and offers such a poor experience that it counts as a form of homelessness? I hope that you would not. And yet, we have come to see boarding or rooming houses increasingly moving to become accepted and embedded as a form of accommodation that is a person’s principal place of residence.
# Must read NSW, Boarders and lodgers, Home, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Human rights.“There’s no place like home”
Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)But for so many of us who rent, current tenancy laws and practice prevent renters from feeling the sense of being settled and secure needed to really feel 'at home'. Too many still struggle to even secure safe, liveable, affordable housing. Part of our work at the Tenants’ Union of NSW is to push for change & towards housing justice. [Read on]
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/WhctKKWxRBDDwCdZfv…
# Must read NSW, Campaigns and law reform.More will be Given: home owners rewarded in budget as homelessness continues to surge
Jeff Fiedler (No paywall)Rates of homelessness are rising alarmingly, particularly among Australians aged 65 to 74. The government offered them nothing in the budget, in defiance of the Aged Care Royal Commission recommendations. (Michael West Media)
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/more-will-be-given-home-owners-re…
# Australia, Federal Government, Health, Homelessness, Housing market, Older people.The Limits of Rights and Protections: Housing as an Essential Service
Leo Patterson Ross Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)Public policy relating to renting and tenancy is typically approached through two competing conceptions: consumer protection and human rights - are we regulating an economic exchange or ensuring that everyone has a roof over their heads? The problems resulting from these, governments resistant to enforceable rights mechanisms and not all tenancies being commercial transactions, mean too many people are denied adequate housing. Perhaps it’s time to explore a different way of framing this issue: through the lens of access to housing as public service provision.
https://www.tenants.org.au/blog/limits-rights-and-protections-ho…
# NSW, Rent, Human rights, International.‘Unfair evictions’ cost councils more than £161m per year, research finds
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... According to government figures, 68,430 householders have faced homelessness after their landlord evicted them either to sell or re-let the property or in retaliation to a complaint. Generation Rent estimates that these types of evictions cost councils £161m in 2019/20 based on the average cost of homelessness prevention activity per householder and the average amount spent on households in temporary accommodation. In order to end these evictions, the group has put forward a number of proposals such as requiring landlords who wish to sell to compensate tenants for a “blameless” home move.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/unfair-evictions-cost-counc…
# International, Eviction, No-grounds evictions.Grenfell costs surpass £500m as council bill revealed
Robert Booth The Guardian (No paywall)The public costs of the Grenfell Tower fire have exceeded £500m after the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea revealed it had spent £406m on its response and recovery efforts in almost four years since the disaster. The sum is in addition to the costs to the taxpayer of the ongoing public inquiry, which hit £117m by the end of March this year, most of which was taken up with lawyers’ bills. The figures stand in stark contrast to the £300,000 saved in a cost-cutting exercise during the refurbishment of the 24-storey council block between 2014 and 2016 that led to combustible aluminium panels being substituted for the planned non-combustible zinc on the exterior of the block. The plastic-filled replacements fuelled the fire on 14 June 2017 which killed 72 people, the inquiry has already concluded. “It has already cost half a billion, and at the end of this awful process some people have estimated costs will reach £1bn,” said Emma Dent Coad, a Labour councillor in north Kensington and former MP for the area. “All of this is the consequence of saving £300,000 on cladding. The scale of the spending reveals the huge impact of this false economy.”
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/may/21/grenfell-costs-s…
# International, Public and community housing, Asbestos, lead, hazardous materials, Housing market, Local Government.