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
Research suggests ending eviction moratoriums led to spikes in COVID cases and deaths
Brad Smith (No paywall)Freom the United States ... Research by a UCLA-led team has determined that the number of COVID-19 cases and the number of deaths from the disease both increased dramatically after states lifted eviction moratoriums that had been in place to protect people who were struggling to make rent payments during the pandemic. The study found that the number of COVID-19 cases doubled and the number of deaths attributable to the disease increased fivefold, in the four-month period after eviction moratoriums expired. (UCLA Newsroom)
https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/ending-eviction-moratoriums-i…
# Hot topic International, Eviction, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health.Homeownership can bring out the worst in you
Jerusalem Demsas (No paywall)From the United States ... It’s the biggest thing you might ever buy. And it could be turning you into a bad person. ... Homeownership, as it has evolved in the United States, often turns its beneficiaries against progress and change, manifesting as anything from opposing homeless shelters in your neighborhood to blocking transit projects in your region. This identity transcends partisanship, a rarity in our polarized age. You’ll find Democrats and Republicans alike screaming opposition to change and growth, no matter what it costs. To that end, Republicans have supported onerous regulations they would likely scoff at in the abstract, and Democrats have defended a system that has perpetuated the racial and economic segregation they often rail against in theory. What can help explain this phenomenon? ... Homeownership is supposed to mean security, opportunity, and a sense of investment in your community. But often, the pressure of tying your family’s financial security to one asset incentivizes homeowners to behave selfishly and antisocially, opposing important public works that could provide significant public benefits. (Vox)
https://www.vox.com/the-goods/22597947/homeowner-nimby-affordabl…
# International, Home ownership, Homelessness, Housing affordability, Housing market, Race and ethnicity.Investors helped by housing tax breaks pile into property market as prices rise
Nassim Khadem The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Data from CoreLogic, to be released later this morning, is expected to show another leap in national house prices. That will please millions of Australians who own their own home or investment property, but it also puts housing further out of reach for first-time buyers. Bill Shorten, who made housing affordability a centrepiece of Labor's 2019 federal election strategy, noted: "This nation can't keep giving away money to property investors to make losses on property." The former Labor leader had wanted to change the rules surrounding the popular negative gearing tax break, which allows more than a million Australians to claim net rental property "losses" against their non-real estate income. Under Mr Shorten's plan, negative gearing would have been restricted to new homes, and the capital gains tax discount — which allows investors to flip properties at a profit without hefty tax bills and costs the federal budget just shy of $10 billion annually — would have been reduced from 50 per cent to 25 per cent. But last week, as Labor leader Anthony Albanese reportedly sold his Marrickville investment home for $2.35 million, he announced the party would dump both policies ahead of the next federal election, at the same time as abandoning Labor's opposition to the federal government's stage 3 tax cuts.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-08-02/house-prices-negative-gea…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.The eviction moratorium is about to expire – and the situation is dire
Emily Benfer and Peter Hepburn The Guardian (No paywall)From the United States ... Over 10 million tenants are behind on rent, and only a fraction of the emergency assistance allocated by Congress has made it to tenants and landlords ... At the end of this week, the federal moratorium protecting renters in the US from eviction will end. As the Delta variant of Covid-19 spreads quickly across the country, and with vaccination rates still low in many areas at highest risk of eviction, millions of families could lose the safe haven of their homes. A surge in evictions will have dire public health consequences, but it could still be avoided. Also, check another story in The Guardian entitled: "US states brace for "avalanche" of evictions as federal moratorium ends' by Amanda Holpuch at: [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/29/eviction-moratorium-expiration-renters]
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/29/the-evicti…
# Hot topic International, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Federal Government, Health, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Pop goes the rental
Saul Eslake (No paywall)Australia is in the middle of a 30-year property bubble. It is a bubble inflated by government policy, and every time it looks as if it might burst, governments rush to blow it up further. All bubbles pop eventually, but few are maintained as carefully as this one. ... Sadly, there’s no reason to think that political calculus is going to change. Nor, therefore, are the housing policies that have created the system Australia has today. (The Saturday Paper)
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/opinion/topic/2021/07/23/pop…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.Calls for Tasmania's public housing waiting list to be addressed
Adam Langenberg ABC (No paywall)Jason Brown has been on the public housing waiting list for almost three years. He has lived with an acquired brain injury and injuries to his shoulders, neck and back after he was hit by a car 13 years ago. He has been couch surfing and sleeping rough in his car in the greater Hobart area for almost the last two years. Sleeping in his car has worsened an already agonising wait. ... Mr Brown said he had been offered temporary places at multiple emergency and short-term accommodations, but had to turn them down because they won't allow him to take his dog, Billie.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-30/tas-calls-for-homeless-cr…
# Must read Australia, Public and community housing, Homelessness.Housing groups call for ‘ring of steel’ to protect struggling renters
Henrietta Cook The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Housing groups are calling on the state government to wrap a “financial ring of steel” around residential tenants who are struggling to pay their rent due to lockdowns. It comes as the preliminary results of a Tenants Victoria survey of 400 renters found that 70 per cent had taken a financial hit during the state’s latest lockdown, losing an average $1280 in income. About half of these renters said this had affected their ability to pay rent. ... Ms Jennifer Beveridge [of Tenants Victoria] said financial assistance for struggling renters and landlords and a freeze on evictions should be implemented whenever the chief health officer declares a lockdown. “We urgently need a financial ring of steel for residential renters who are struggling in lockdown,” she said.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/housing-groups-call-for…
# Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market, State Government.‘Housing for hippies now for hipsters’: Alternative plan to boost affordability
Angus Thompson The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Co-living, a trendy new wave of communal housing championed by millennials, [sometimes called 'new or next generation boarding houses] will be automatically approved in all areas where apartments are allowed in order to flood NSW with affordable developments. Seniors will also be housed in “vertical villages” that could be in the middle of CBDs or on top of shopping centres under new planning changes to boost housing options amid an affordability crisis and shortages of supply. The reforms under the NSW government’s new consolidated housing policy also include classing aged care homes as state significant developments to create more appropriate facilities and giving greater flexibility over the allowable size of secondary dwellings on rural-metropolitan land. You will find a link to the proposed Housing State Environmental Planning Policy at: [https://email.dpie.nsw.gov.au/housing-sepp-consultation-draft-now-on-exhibtion?ecid=ACsprvvbcxZlNePPw37YRtwd8OQYilI1r7juBMns6NBTrGyb63NzTeV55zwAo_9uH8YsbYLr0Voa&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--omcs-G-7jo5MECI6cGJpgbt-EjmhUqp24UcgMiP7pQEohS_VpaU2hK7was12A8HHF_OPgsLp46Mf6bfL8Dz_mSNvyiL4_1rUGeYBNJKyBoXC3d6Y]
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/housing-for-hippies-now-for-…
# NSW, Boarders and lodgers, Rent, Share houses, Affordable housing, Housing market, Older people, Planning and development, State Government, Tax, Young people.