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
Welcome to the Human Doom Loop
Diana Lind Slate (No paywall)For a decade, my therapy appointments required a 30-minute train ride to a mid-rise medical office building in suburban Philadelphia, where I reclined on a black leather couch, grabbing the occasional Kleenex. But since 2020, I’ve simply closed my web browser (article drafts, credit card bills, LinkedIn feed), angled a 1080p camera so my therapist can’t see baskets of laundry and my kids’ stuffies, and spilled my guts. I sometimes wish I could still visit my therapist in person and even miss those train rides where I’d take stock of my week, but I have no choice but to log on: My therapist, like so many other professionals, has given up going into the office.
https://slate.com/business/2024/11/remote-work-life-loneliness-i…
# Hot topic International, .Why rents are still higher in much of the U.S. than before the pandemic
Kaisha Young, Marconja Zor & John Yang PBS News (No paywall)Rents today are well above what they were before the pandemic. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ second-highest personal finance concern this election year is the cost of housing, behind only inflation. John Yang speaks with Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, about what’s keeping rents high.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-rents-are-still-higher-in-…
# Video International, Rent.Renter blacklisted after leaving gift for landlord
Orana Durney-Benson Domain (No paywall)An Australian renter claims an act of kindness was repaid by their name being placed on a national blacklist. The tenant left a bookshelf in their furnished apartment “as a gift for a future tenant”. Most of the furniture that the landlord provided had been in poor working order, including a broken lamp, drawers filled with junk, and a microwave that “smoked when used for months”. Given that most of the furniture was broken, the renter believed the functional bookshelf they left in the property would be received positively. Instead, their name was added to the national blacklist run by TICA, a private company that collects renters’ data.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/renter-blacklisted-after-leaving-…
# Must read Australia, .Meet the forever renters: ‘Nobody wants to be in share housing when they’re in their late 70s’
Daisy Dumas The Guardian (No paywall)Too old to be renting” is how Thomas, a 65-year-old Queenslander sums it up. He and his partner had been saving to buy a home before rent rises ate into much of their savings. “Home ownership opportunities have vanished,” he says. A country that once considered home ownership a pillar of adult achievement is becoming a land of older renters. The managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Dr Michael Fotheringham, expects the Australian home ownership rate of 66% to fall to 63% by 2026, while research for Housing for the Aged Action Group found that the number of private renters aged over 55 increased by 73% between 2011 and 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/07/australia…
# Hot topic Australia, Share houses.Ben moved 28km for cheaper housing. There he found a hidden cost
Tawar Razaghi The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Ben Kreunen has moved further away from Melbourne over the years to maintain affordable rent as the rental crisis has escalated. “I lived in share houses to start out with, and I lived closer to the city. It was easier with multiple wages. But as time went on, the closer areas started becoming more expensive, and I gradually moved further out,” the 59-year-old tech support worker said. New research lays bare the scale of hidden costs that households are paying as a trade-off for cheaper rents or sticker prices, which are unaccounted for in standard housing affordability measurements.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/ben-moved-28km-for-cheaper-…
# Must read, TUNSW in the media Australia, .Houses are too expensive to buy, but that’s not the problem
Victoria Devine The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)When we talk about housing affordability in Australia, we often frame it as though the system is inherently broken. And if something is broken, it becomes something we need to fix. But I want to challenge that perspective. What if, instead of seeing housing affordability as a problem to solve, we started seeing it as a reality to adjust to? Let me explain. Ever since the postwar housing boom in the 1950s, Australians have come to believe that property ownership should be the default position. That owning the place we call home is the norm. But in many other parts of the world being saddled with a mortgage is not the rule, it’s the exception.
https://www.smh.com.au/money/investing/houses-are-too-expensive-…
# Hot topic Australia, .Who wants to make housing affordable in Australia?
Francisco Silva Law Society Journal (No paywall)2023 poll from the Centre of Youth Policy and Education Practice claimed that 70 per cent of young Australians saw an urgency in fixing housing affordability. Since then, the Australian housing question has not left the public discourse. Earlier this year, the ‘People’s Commission into the Housing Crisis’, convened by advocacy group Everybody’s Home, painted a very concerning picture of the current state of affairs – widely spread housing stress, precarity, and financial hardship that leads to anxiety, uncertainty and inequality.
https://lsj.com.au/articles/who-wants-to-make-housing-affordable…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.Forced to move by the Australian housing crisis: three-hour commutes and ‘never mind seeing your family’
Daisy Dumas The Guardian (No paywall)It was Alice and her family’s sixth move in as many years that pushed them over the edge. They’d relocated from their home city of Sydney to the Central Coast and back, paid $700 a week for a Lilyfield rental complete with weeds – inside the house – then moved to a $900-a-week house in Drummoyne, which their landlords promptly sold, making a $1m profit and leaving the family of four high and dry. “That was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” the small business co-owner says. Exhausted, financially depleted and with no trust in landlords, she and her partner stored their belongings, bought a caravan and – with their now six- and 17-year-old children and two dogs in tow – travelled for seven months.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/09/forced-to…
# Hot topic Australia, .