"Isn’t there supposed to be a ban on evictions at the moment?"

Two weeks ago Prime Minister Scott Morrison, following a meeting of national cabinet, announced states and territories had agreed to put a moratorium on evictions for the next six months for people in financial distress, unable to meet their rental commitments. Local Tenants Advice and Advocacy Services have been flooded with calls the last few weeks from people seeking advice in the context of the COVID19 health crisis.

There’s a lot of phrases being used at the moment to describe some kind of change to the way we’ve gotten used to renting happening in Australia. People are discussing all sorts of ways for government to step in. Some of these phrases though, might not mean what people think they do.

The Federal ALP conference is happening in Adelaide at the moment, and one of the big early announcements was a plan to build a lot of 'affordable' housing. This can probably be treated as the first big housing announcement of the coming election campaign. It has been met with near-rapturous support from community housing providers and their supporters, like the Everybody's Home campaign. Others, like ACOSS have been more circumspect. And some on twitter have raised some concerns. Let's dig in to what the policy is, and what we might expect to deliver.

Everybody's Home is a new campaign by a coalition of organisations in the housing and community sectors. The campaign will bring national attention to reforms urgently needed to fix Australia’s housing system. The TU is happy to be supporting this campaign aimed at improving housing for everyone, including renters.

Our Advocacy and Research Officer Leo spoke to ABC News 24 about a new report which shows that Australia has one of the lowest rates of home ownership amongst 9 countries analysed by HSBC.
We point out that what people really want are homes they can rely on - watch now!