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
Homeless camps are rising as affordability falls. It’s a problem Australia has solved before
Rachel Gallagher The Conversation (No paywall)A homelessness worker in regional Victoria has seen a 200% increase in people living in free campgrounds – and a big increase in families “sleeping rough”, he told the ABC this week. For many people, finding a rental is “nearly impossible”, he said. At the same time, disputes over homeless encampments are happening across Australia. Lately, local governments have abandoned their “welfare first” approach to people camping on public land, seizing and destroying tents and personal belongings. In Queensland, legal action supported by Basic Rights Queensland recently found that eviction of a homeless camp by Moreton Bay City Council, north of Brisbane, violated human rights, with those evicted “not treated as humans”.
https://theconversation.com/homeless-camps-are-rising-as-afforda…
# Australia, .Renting for life is normal in Switzerland: Should it be here as well?
Atom Go Tian Canberra Times (Paywall)Homeownership remains within reach for most Australians. The OECD's latest data puts Australia's combined ownership rate at 62.7 per cent, steady for over a decade and just below the OECD average of 70.1 per cent. What has changed is not whether Australians own homes, but how, and more importantly, at what cost. For most of the twentieth century, homeownership was a social contract available to most in the form of affordable land, accessible credit, a pathway achievable within a reasonable working life. As house prices have climbed, the path from renter to mortgaged owner to outright owner has elongated dramatically.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9229727/australian-dream-…
# Hot topic Australia, .I’m losing my home through a no-fault eviction
The Guardian (No paywall)Regarding your article on landlords issuing section 21 notices ahead of the upcoming ban on them (24 March), I am currently going through exactly this process. I am being forced out of my home through no fault of my own, after years of paying rent and doing everything expected of a “good” tenant. It turns out that being responsible is not protection, it is merely compliance before eviction. We have been told for years that no-fault evictions would be abolished. And yet here we are – a last-minute rush of notices, entirely predictable, entirely avoidable and entirely devastating for those of us on the receiving end.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2026/mar/26/im-losing-my-home-…
# International, Eviction.How Singapore and Australia Took Opposite Paths on Housing
Bloomberg (No paywall)As homeownership drifts further out of reach, governments are looking for new ways to help first-time buyers come up with the money. In Australia, economist Saul Eslake argues that letting buyers tap retirement savings or reduce down payments only puts more upward pressure on prices. In Singapore, economist Sumit Agarwal points to a very different system: mandatory savings there can be used for housing, but steep taxes discourage buying second and third homes. Through the experiences of first-time buyers Jordan Davies in Melbourne and Jeff Chia in Singapore, the story explores whether easier access to capital really helps people buy homes or simply makes housing even more expensive.
# Video International, .Getting $750 a month didn’t end homelessness – but our study shows it still improved the lives of homeless people
Benjamin F. Henwood The Conversation (No paywall)Can giving homeless people US$750 a month to use any way they choose help them move into long-term housing? I am the director of the University of Southern California Homelessness Policy Research Institute. My research team, in partnership with Miracle Messages, a San Francisco social services nonprofit, set out to answer that question in a study that will be published in an upcoming peer-reviewed issue of Social Work Research. In one of the first randomized studies of basic income for homeless people in the U.S., 103 homeless people living in California received $750 payments every month for a year. Then we compared their housing situations with people who were homeless but did not receive this money. All study participants met the federal definition of literal homelessness. That basically means they either stayed in a homeless shelter or lived on the streets.
https://theconversation.com/getting-750-a-month-didnt-end-homele…
# International, .Locals and refugees are stuck in housing limbo in this city. It's fuelling a deep divide
Jordan Osborne SBS (No paywall)Seven-year-old Daria and 12-year-old Devon live with their single mother, Michelle Kerr, in Glasgow. They're just two of the more than 10,000 children living in temporary accommodation in Scotland — the highest number ever recorded. A former healthcare worker, Michelle and her family found themselves facing homelessness after the private rental they were living in was repossessed. For three years, the Kerr family has lived in housing limbo — first in a hotel, then two flats, before landing in a two-bedroom temporary accommodation flat in the outer suburbs of Glasgow.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/dateline/article/this-city-is-known-…
# Hot topic International, .Freeze the Rent? Well, No. Subsidize the Rent? Better Idea.
Center NYC (No paywall)Urban Matters: Alex, you recently stepped down from the New York City Rent Guidelines Board (RGB), after serving on it for six years. What advice do you have for the board’s new members, who, as you did, will be voting on the parameters for rents in about a million apartments? Alex Schwartz: That’s a big question. At the outset, I’d advise new members to look closely at the reports produced by RGB staff and listen closely to the testimony given at RGB meetings before arriving at a decision about rent changes. Rent-stabilized housing is incredibly diverse – in terms of the types and age of the housing, the degree to which buildings are rent-stabilized, the nature of building ownership, and the incomes of the residents.
http://www.centernyc.org/urban-matters-2/freeze-the-rent-well-no…
# International, .Putting the ‘lord’ in ‘landlord’: US churches step up to build housing amid shortage
Gaya Gupta The Guardian (No paywall)A parcel of land behind Little Rock AME Zion church in Charlotte, North Carolina, remained mostly empty for nearly a decade before the congregation approached the city with a proposal. The land sat unused while housing prices climbed and locals were being pushed out of their neighborhoods. So, the church proposed in 2018, why not develop housing there? About six years after the project was approved, Varick on 7th opened 105 apartment units, half of which were designated as affordable housing.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/mar/29/yigby-churches-b…
# International, .