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
Victoria under pressure to mandate reporting of homelessness deaths
Christopher Knaus The Guardian (No paywall)A former housing minister and a supreme court judge have joined the chief executives of 23 homelessness agencies to call for reforms mandating the reporting of homelessness deaths. Last month a Guardian Australia investigation revealed that Australians experiencing homelessness were dying at an average age of 44, a shocking life expectancy gap driven by violence, treatable illness and systemic failures across the housing, health and justice sectors. The revelations have prompted a nationwide push for mandatory reporting of homelessness deaths to the coroner, a reform that would go some way in ending their invisibility.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/20/victoria-…
# Hot topic Australia, .Remote housing in the NT is overcrowded and rundown. This 'historic' investment is planning to change that
SBS (No paywall)A historic multi-billion-dollar housing investment is set to address First Nations people that are living in overcrowded, inadequate and unsafe homes in the Northern Territory. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the $4 billion, jointly funded by the federal and territory governments, during a visit to the community of Binjari, near Katherine on Tuesday.The federal government is contributing $2.1 billion, about $844 million of which is new money, with the rest repurposed from other projects.
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/article/historic-4-billion-investmen…
# Must read Australia, Aboriginal renters.Renters sweltered this summer in ‘barely habitable’ homes: report
Nathan Schmidt news.com.au (No paywall)A scathing new report into the rental market has found tenants sweltered through peak temperatures of more than 30C for hours a day, leaving homes “barely habitable”. The report by tenant advocacy group Better Renting tracked the temperature and humidity in 109 rental homes over the summer, including in NSW and Queensland. Dubbed “Cruel Summer”, the report found the average median indoor temperature exceeded 25C. Worse still, researchers found temperatures peaked at more than 30C for two hours a day, with indoor temperatures exceeding those outdoors almost half the time in NSW.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/renters-swel…
# Hot topic Australia, .Rental properties 3C hotter indoors, survey of Australian tenants over summer finds
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Renters are being forced to live in sweltering conditions, with homes recording inside temperatures 3C hotter than outside across the summer, a new report from Better Renting has revealed. Summer temperatures inside 109 rental homes across the country were tracked from December to February this year, as part of the organisation’s Renter Researchers citizen-science project. The report found renters across Australia were experiencing a median indoor temperature of 25C, meaning homes were above this level 50% of the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/mar/18/australia…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.'I eat or I pay my bills': Americans describe rent burden fears, concerns
Kiara Alfonseca ABC (No paywall)United States: Half of American renters are burdened by the cost of housing, according to a recent Harvard study, officially capturing the grim reality facing renters nationwide. Marianne Smith, a 65-year-old Oklahoma resident, is one of them -- paying about 35% of her income toward rent, she said in an interview with ABC News. "I eat or I pay my bills," Smith told ABC News. "Had I not had family and friends that could afford to just put money in my bank account, I'd be on the streets.”
https://abcnews.go.com/US/eat-pay-bills-americans-describe-rent-…
# Hot topic International, .Modular homes were hailed as a solution to housing crises. But the sector is now struggling to scale
Vicky McKeever CNBC (No paywall)The idea of using pre-assembled components in housebuilding is far from new. Modern tech-enabled versions of modular housing promise a faster, more sustainable solution to housing crises, according to experts. But the sector has seen better adoption in some countries compared to others where it has failed to scale — such as the U.K. Prefabrication has existed in many forms, from the defenses used by William the Conqueror in his invasion of England in 1066 to Sears’ mail-order homes in the U.S. in the early 1900s.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/03/18/modular-housing-a-century-old-su…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing.The Case Against YIMBYism
Michael Friedrich The New Republic (No paywall)Sonja Trauss, the charismatic founder of the YIMBY movement, recently spoke at a conference of fellow travelers about the importance of supporting small home builders. “Most neighborhoods are still zoned low-density, and so if you’re seeing new housing, it’s going to be small projects,” she said at Austin’s YIMBYtown 2024, a gathering of people who believe that saying “yes in my backyard” to private development will fix America’s housing crisis. Trauss bemoaned the onerous regulations, fees, and paperwork—not to mention meddling homeowners—that make it so hard for small firms to build. Her organization, YIMBY Law, sues cities that create barriers to new construction. “What we’re doing, a lot of it is really for the small developers,” she said, quickly adding, “I mean, and the future residents, of course, guys.” The audience laughed.
https://newrepublic.com/article/179147/case-against-yimbyism-yim…
# Hot topic International, Public and community housing, Rent.Economics is in 'disarray', having placed efficiency before ethics and human well-being, says Nobel laureate
Gareth Hutchens ABC (No paywall)Mainstream economics is in "disarray." It ignores the reality of power, it neglects questions of equity, and its policy recommendations can be "little more than a license for plunder." That's the opinion of Angus Deaton, the British-American economist who won the economics version of the Nobel Prize in 2015. The 78-year-old professor says he's recently been changing his mind about views he's long held and it's a "discomfiting process."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-17/nobel-prize-winning-econo…
# International, .