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
Miami building collapse search stretches to day six with 11 dead, 150 still missing
ABC (No paywall)A letter written only weeks ago has emerged in which residents were warned structural problems in the Miami building that collapsed last week had "gotten significantly worse" and owners needed to pay a hefty price to get them fixed.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-30/miami-building-collapse-f…
# International, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Canada’s housing crisis needs answers — but first we need to ask the right questions
Jim Dunn The Conversation (No paywall)The struggle to match housing costs to incomes affects everyone in Canada. It impacts not only people who struggle to afford a place to live, but health care, education, the economy and quality of life in general. Housing is a critical piece of our social infrastructure. It is literally the platform on which most other aspects of social life depend. For growing numbers who either don’t have a home at all, or who must spend large proportions of their incomes on shelter — the normal affordability benchmark says shelter costs (rent/mortgage plus taxes plus utilities) should not exceed 30 per cent — the hardships are real.
https://theconversation.com/canadas-housing-crisis-needs-answers…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Disability, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market, Landlords and agents, LGBTIQ+, Older people, Race and ethnicity.Heritage rooming houses shut as pandemic hits vulnerable tenants
Simon Johanson The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The pandemic is forcing many of Melbourne’s rooming houses to shut their doors as social housing groups leave the sector and move vulnerable tenants to better digs. ... [Social housing group Unison chief executive] James King said the shift towards better apartment-style accommodation has accelerated as a result of COVID-19 after operators realised people living in close quarters couldn’t self isolate because of shared facilities like bathrooms and toilets, making them vulnerable to the pandemic.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/heritage-rooming-house…
# Australia, Boarders and lodgers, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.How the Polynesian Panthers stood up to landlords and their damp rentals
Brad Flahive and Alex Liu (No paywall)From the 1950s, New Zealand’s migrant communities lived in the homes that made up Auckland’s then working-class suburbs of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn.
Sickly mould, rotten floors and poor sanitation were a breeding ground for vermin rather than a habitable home for families. With nowhere else to turn, desperate families asked the Polynesian Panthers to step in. “We would tell these people to pay their rent in a separate account and show the landlords that the rent was being paid, and it would be available to them once they fixed up the property,” recalled Alec Toleafoa ...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/residential-prope…
# History International, Rent, Repairs, Mould.Do millennials really prefer to rent – or have we just been cheated out of a proper home?
Arwa Mahdawi The Guardian (No paywall)Capitalism is reshaping the property market, locking younger generations out of buying somewhere to live and expecting us to be happy about it ... The year is 2070. Nobody owns a home any more; the concept of individuals possessing property has gone the way of the floppy disk. Instead, a few large corporations control all the world’s real estate and people “subscribe” to holistic housing solutions on their iPhone 78X in the same way they currently subscribe to Netflix. You can pay your monthly subscription in billionaire-backed cryptocurrency: BezosCoin, MuskCoin or ZuckCoin. If you default on your housing sub (nobody uses old-fashioned terms such as “rent” any more) you are dispatched to Mars to pay off your debt via indentured servitude in intergalactic Amazon warehouses.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/15/do-millenn…
# International, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Young people.Sydney’s desperate buyers push up demand for land
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)Simon D’Souza watched the screen with his heart in his mouth. He’d barely slept a wink the night before, fretting about what was to come, and now he felt his body tense with anxiety and anticipation. The figure on the Zoom screen was plucking numbers from a barrel, but this draw was for more, much more than a random prize. The result of this would determine the entire future for Simon, his fiancée Abi Hutchinson and their children, Beau, 2, and one-year-old Amber. “We knew there were 379 people in the draw but for only 31 lots of land,” Simon says. “So, we knew we’d be very lucky to get one, and I never win anything at things like that.” “They took out the first 10 numbers, and nothing. Then the next 10 numbers … and yes! We were number 26! My jaw dropped and I thought, ‘Oh my God!”. I was at work, so I immediately phoned Abi at home. She was gobsmacked too. We were so excited!” Welcome to buying land in the frenzied Sydney property market of 2021, a mission made even more frenetic by COVID-19.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydneys-desperate-buyers-push-up-…
# NSW, Homelessness, Housing market.More than 1250 families out on the street since rental moratorium ended
Josh Zimmerman (Paywall)Landlords have launched eviction proceedings against more than 1250 families since the rental moratorium ended in March. (The West Australian)
https://thewest.com.au/news/social/more-than-1250-families-out-o…
# Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19.Why are rental properties so sh*tty? Here’s why we should raise the minimum standards
Claire Bracken ABC (No paywall)Unless you’ve been living under a rock that your parents bought for you, you’ll know that young people aren’t really getting into the home-owning game. ... “Housing insecurity is not just the obvious: 'Gosh, I wonder if I'm gonna have a roof over my head next week'. [Hugh Mackay, the social researcher says] it's a much deeper psychological issue of: 'Am I being taken seriously as a member of this society? Or am I being overlooked?’" (ABC Triplej Hack)
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/why-we-should-raise…
# Australia, Rent, Repairs, Tribunal NCAT, Human rights, Landlords and agents, Minimum habitability standards, Mould, Young people.