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
Rents increase to more than half median take-home pay across capitals
Liana Walker ABC (No paywall)The average apartment now costs half of the average Australian income to rent, with prices exceeding the 30 per cent housing stress mark even for six-figure earners, according to a new report. Housing advocacy group Everybody's Home has found renting a unit now costs more than half the median take-home pay of a single worker in every Australian capital city. The 2026 Priced Out report found apartments on average nationally cost $614 per week, making up 56 per cent of the take-home income of someone earning $70,000 — close to Australia's median income of $74,100.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-24/everybodys-home-rental-in…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.Woman loses house claim after judge finds case undermined by ‘hallucinated’ AI research
Samantha Healy news.com.au (No paywall)A Queensland judge has ordered a Gladstone woman out of a house she claimed was meant to become hers, finding her 15-year stay was a tenancy, not a backdoor path to ownership. In a District Court ruling, Judge Carl Heaton KC found the evidence “overwhelmingly supports the conclusion” that Tammy Ellem and those living with her were occupying the Clinton property under “an informal rental agreement”, not under any deal to buy the home from former partner Brian Coop.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/woman-loses-house-cl…
# Legal significance Australia, .Victoria’s new Premier should rethink the demolition of Melbourne’s public housing towers
Peter Mares The Fifth Estate (No paywall)With less than 100 days until the state election, and with Labor behind in the polls, Victorian Premier Ben Carroll wants to set himself apart from his predecessors. He has delayed controversial work-from-home legislation championed by Jacinta Allan and called a royal commission to investigate corruption in the construction industry under her watch. Carroll is no fan of the multibillion dollar Suburban Rail Loop, conceived in secret prior to the 2018 state election by long-serving Premier Daniel Andrews.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/columns/spinifex/victorias-new-pre…
# Australia, Public and community housing.Finland tried to end homelessness. What can we learn from its runaway success – and recent failures?
Miranda Bryant The Guardian (No paywall)At 3.30am, Vello Senkel awoke to a knock on his door. Standing on his doorstep were his neighbours with an urgent request: “Do you have salt? We want to boil macaroni.” He acquiesced, but it turned out that salt wasn’t the only ingredient they were missing: “And do you also have macaroni?” His warm face, framed by jaw-length white hair, is at once charmed and outraged as he recounts the interaction while smoking a cigarette outside his apartment building the following morning.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/aug/23/finland-tried-to…
# Hot topic International, Rent.The Guardian view on London’s social housing: pumping billions into the economy every year
The Guardian (No paywall)London’s city centre has long been a place where rich and poor live side by side, while so many other metropolitan equivalents – Paris, New York, San Francisco – remain the preserve of the rich. It maintains its mix today: in many inner London boroughs, between 20% and 40% of households live in social housing. A small but steady decline in social housing in these areas leaves many fearing that the city’s diversity is under threat.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/16/the-guardi…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent.'Got our own plans': treasurer demolishes housing push
Jacob Shteyman and Andrew Brown Canberra Times (No paywall)Australia does not need a dramatic increase to public housing, the federal treasurer has claimed, despite detailed calls from the country's peak union body. In its new housing proposal, released on Wednesday, the ACTU has urged federal and state governments to agree to a public housing target of one in 10 new homes, compared to the current rate of one in 50. That's a similar rate to what was achieved under former prime minister Bob Hawke in the 1980s and can be attained by using modern methods of construction such as modular housing, ACTU president Michele O'Neil said.
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9333027/got-our-own-plans…
# Australia, .Statistics, not housing need, are now driving EU policy, Finnish lawmaker warns
EU Perspectives (No paywall)Finland needs up to 36,000 new flats a year, according to a Housing Europe report, yet the funding meant to build them is drying up. Finnish MEP Maria Ohisalo (Greens/EFA) has just returned from a field mission to her home country as a member of the European Parliament’s special committee on the housing crisis (HOUS). In this interview with EU Perspectives, she explains what other member states could learn from Finland’s ‘housing first’ model, and why Brussels is partly to blame for its funding squeeze.
https://euperspectives.eu/2026/08/statistics-not-housing-need-ar…
# International, .The Road to the Rent Freeze
Tara Raghuveer The New York Review (No paywall)On the evening of June 25, minutes after New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to freeze the rent for a million rent-stabilized apartments across the five boroughs, I caught up with a tenant I know named Josie Wells. Standing outside the auditorium in East Harlem where the vote had just occurred, we spoke about the implications of the freeze for her own apartment, which she rented from the real-estate group Pinnacle until the company filed for bankruptcy and put over five thousand of its units—including her own—up for auction.
https://www.nybooks.com/online/2026/08/08/the-road-to-the-rent-f…
# International, Rent.