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
Buying a house cheaper than renting for a third of the country
Sue Lannin ABC (No paywall)More than one third of Australian properties are cheaper to buy than rent, with loan repayments lower than renting in nearly all regional areas of the Northern Territory. In a new report, CoreLogic found repaying a home loan is now cheaper than paying rent on just over 36 per cent of Australian homes because of record low interest rates.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-15/housing-property-rents-ec…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market.Why we need engineers who study ethics as much as maths
S Travis Waller, Kourosh Kayvani, Lucy Marshall and Robert F Care The Conversation (No paywall)The recent apartment building collapse in Miami, Florida, is a tragic reminder of the huge impacts engineering can have on our lives. Disasters such as this force engineers to reflect on their practice and perhaps fundamentally change their approach. Specifically, we should give much greater weight to ethics when training engineers.
https://theconversation.com/why-we-need-engineers-who-study-ethi…
# Australia, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.The climate crisis will create two classes: those who can flee, and those who cannot
Peter Gleick The Guardian (No paywall)Nearly 700 million people worldwide live in low coastal zones vulnerable to sea-level rise and coastal storms. That number could reach a billion by 2050
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/07/global-hea…
# International, Climate change.Scottish government allocates £3.2bn in affordable housing grant to local authorities
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)Councils in Scotland have been allocated a share of more than £3.2bn in grant funding to spend on affordable housing supply over the next five years. ... The funding is allocated to councils via the government’s Affordable Housing Supply Programme and can be used by councils to plan and deliver affordable homes, including in partnership with registered social landlords. ... The funding comes as the newly re-elected Scottish government aims to fulfil its promise of delivering 100,000 affordable homes over the next decade ... with at least 70% of these for social rent.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/scottish-government-allocat…
# International, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Local Government.General Synod digest: more action taken to solve UK housing crisis
Pat Ashwoth (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The General Synod took steps to further the Church’s commitment to building decent, affordable housing by commending the report of the Archbishops’ Commission on Housing, Church and Community, as presented to it last year. ... [This sees] applying the assets we have to meet the housing needs of the marginalised and vulnerable.”... “Mission is finding out what God is doing, and joining in,” the Gloucester diocesan secretary said. "The Church had an opportunity to leave a tangible legacy, a positive statement on how to build sustainable housing.” (Church Times)
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2021/16-july/news/uk/gene…
# International, Public and community housing, Affordable housing.'Extravagant' rental prices push more renters into temporary accommodation, accelerating homelessness
Keira Proust and Simon Lauder ABC (No paywall)New data shows rental house prices have dramatically increased in regional NSW over the past year, forcing more people out of the market and into temporary accommodation. Domain's 2021 June Quarter report found rental prices rose the most in the Snowy Mountains region — up by more than 28 per cent since last year — with the Byron Shire following close behind at 26 per cent and the Wingecarribee Shire by 20 per cent. It is something that Chris Rixon has felt on the NSW far-south coast after trying to move to the region from Melbourne two months ago. "We're in a caravan park at Pambula because there are no rentals in the valley," Mr Rixon said. ... Mr Rixon has been given a caravan by local charity the Social Justice Advocates to live in temporarily while he continues to look for permanent accommodation, but the Bega Valley region has also felt the spike in rental prices. It has increased by more than 12 per cent in the past year, up to a median price of $450 a week for a house, which chief executive officer of the state's Tenants' Union Leo Patterson Ross said was concerning. ... The Social Justice Advocates are currently raising money to help accommodate people sleeping rough, with the aim of raising $100,000 by the end of the year to get a new caravan set up. But the Tenants' Union said more needed to be done by both landlords and the state government to improve the situation, with too much of the responsibility currently falling to local charities.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-16/extravagant-rental-prices…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Land lease communities, Rent, Homelessness, Regional NSW, State Government.Stigma and Social Housing in England
Mercy Denedo and Amanze Ejiogu (No paywall)Everyday in England, people are judged negatively and even actively discriminated against because they rent their home from a social landlord. While it is hard to fathom why such stigmatization occurs, it is the reality faced by many people and their families who are living in socially rented accommodation in England. Although there is undeniable evidence of stigmatization of social housing, research on social housing stigma has been scant. In this report, we explored how stigma is constructed, how it is experienced, and what is being done to challenge/address it by diverse stakeholders in the housing sector. (Durham University)
https://www.dur.ac.uk/business/research/management/organisation-…
# International, Discrimination, Public and community housing.Evaluation and learning in public housing urban renewal
Christian Nygaard, Simon Pinnegar, Elizabeth Taylor, Iris Levin and Rachel Maguire AHURI (No paywall)A new report released today, undertaken by researchers from Swinburne University of Technology, University of New South Wales and Monash University analyses how evaluation of public housing renewal is informing policy development and delivery to maximise financial returns and socio-economic outcomes. It seeks to understand how key public policies, such as mixed-tenure development, can enable both social and economic returns. The research, conducted pre-COVID-19, found policy options exist that can unlock more inclusive conceptualisations of value, and shift the reliance on land value in the program logic of public housing renewal. It also highlights a consistency of views across stakeholders on how public housing renewal works, including state governments and private developers, as well as community housing providers (CHPs) and local governments.
https://www.ahuri.edu.au/research/final-reports/358?utm_source=Z…
# Research alert Australia, Public and community housing, Estate renewal.