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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
There’s an easy solution to housing affordability. But voters hate it
Jim Malo The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Lowering house prices is the best way to make housing more affordable, but experts say “heartless” major parties have almost completely discarded the approach. Others say the scale of house price falls to make housing affordable again is too great, and would damage the economy. Housing affordability is at its worst on record according to several measures. Sydney and Melbourne house prices have weakened recently, but marginal falls have not been enough to offset huge price rises over the past 20 years. High interest rates have slashed borrowing capacities, yet house prices continued to rise, worsening affordability given that buyers could borrow less to buy more expensive homes.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/house-prices-have-been-fall…
# Must read Australia, Rent.Housing crisis the top social issue keeping bosses up at night
Sumeyya Ilanbey The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)The nation’s housing crisis has emerged as the biggest social issue keeping Australian business leaders up at night. KPMG’s annual survey of more than 300 C-suite executives and board members, released on Monday, revealed almost half believed the lack of meaningful progress on housing affordability was not just a challenge facing the country, but also a danger to businesses. “[There’s] this recognition within businesses that their workforce is finding housing affordability even more of a problem, which then starts to limit individuals choosing places to work,” said Brendan Rynne, KPMG’s chief economist. “It makes it harder for people to work out where to live, how to travel to work. Working from home has been helpful in resolving some of those issues, but not everyone can do that.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/housing-crisis-the-t…
# Must read Australia, .Young people are turning to house-sitting for an exciting and cheap lifestyle
Sarah Richards ABC (No paywall)Jade and Adriana Wales last paid rent almost eight years ago and have no plans to start anytime soon. The married singer-songwriters have spent time living in places like a two-storey home with a swimming pool along the coast of New South Wales, without it costing them a cent. "It's a barter system," said Mr Wales, 29. "We get free accommodation, and they get pet sitters while they go on holiday. "No money exchanged." After Ms Wales finished university, the young couple found their full-time jobs "a little bit too toxic". "So, we decided, why don't we work for ourselves and house-sit, and we can just go anywhere," said Ms Wales, 31.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-30/house-sitting-lifestyle-y…
# Hot topic Australia, .The housing minister says property prices shouldn't fall. This is what experts say
Evelyn Manfield ABC (No paywall)"We're not trying to bring down house prices," Housing Minister Clare O'Neil declared on ABC's youth radio station triple j. "That may be the view of young people, [but] it's not the view of our government." Instead, she insisted the federal government wanted "sustainable price growth". "We don't want to see some of the growth we've seen in some parts of the country where you're getting double-digit increases in house prices year-on-year," she told Hack host Dave Marchese. The interview aired last month, but it has found a new life online this week.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-12-14/housing-minister-says-hou…
# Must read Australia, .Middle-income Australians experiencing rental stress with a third of pay spent on housing, report shows
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Even Australians on median incomes are in rental stress, a new report has found, with households on middle incomes spending 33% of their wages on housing. Last year saw the smallest annual rental increase since 2021, going up 4.8% over the year – down from 8.1% in 2023, CoreLogic’s report found. But since the onset of Covid, rents have increased by 36.1% nationally, equivalent to a rise of $171 a week, or $8,884 a year at the median level. Housing advocates say out-of-reach house prices and growing rents mean the system is in crisis. With 10,000 new people accessing homelessness services each month, they are calling for governments to introduce a cap on rent increases.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/jan/15/australia…
# Hot topic Australia, .The promise of AI & access to justice
Chris Povey LinkedIn (No paywall)
I remember being a duty lawyer at the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT). My workspace was a small, windowless office on the fifth floor, where I’d sit and wait for ‘the knock’. Each knock brought a person in crisis – someone facing eviction or consumer disputes, weighed down by bags of documents and often with long, complicated stories of hardship. For those working in the justice system, it’s a common experience to meet people desperate for help in navigating a system that feels impossible to understand. Legal need is massive and growing – millions miss out. Landmark research from the Victoria Law Foundation shows most people facing legal problems never receive professional help.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/promise-ai-access-justice-chris-p…
# Hot topic Australia, .All residents living in unsafe government-owned Batemans Bay motel ‘assisted’ to find alternative housing
Oliver Jacques About Regional (No paywall)Twenty low-income residents who were living in an unsafe NSW Government-owned Batemans Bay motel hit by fire and vandals have been “assisted” to find alternative accommodation, says Transport for NSW. The longstanding Bay Waters motel premises was bought by the NSW Government for $4 million in 2018 to be run as an ongoing motel business as part of the Batemans Bay bridge works. The property was acquired to facilitate roadworks while a private operator continued to run the accommodation service. The chronic rental shortage in Batemans Bay meant that some 20 residents were living in the building permanently.
https://aboutregional.com.au/all-residents-living-in-unsafe-gove…
# Must read, TUNSW in the media NSW, .Sydney family pays $1000 per week for cockroach-infested unit
Orana Durney-Benson Domain (No paywall)A man states his two-year-old daughter is facing health issues due to rampant mould and cockroaches in their rental apartment. The renter alleges that the landlord has demonstrated “a lack of urgency” in resolving the problems. “There is a cockroach infestation in the basement of the building, and anytime we open the windows, large adult cockroaches enter our apartment (along with huntsman spiders which like to eat them),” an anonymous Sydney renter wrote on Reddit. Due to the cockroach infestation, the renter states he has been unable to open the windows to ventilate the house. There are currently no fly screens in place. He states that the inability to ventilate the house has worsened a mould problem in the unit. “The mould has been getting worse despite running our air conditioning almost constantly to reduce the speed at which the mould is spreading.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydney-family-pays-1000-per-week-…
# Hot topic, TUNSW in the media NSW, .