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
The faces of Sydney’s rental crisis
Amber Schultz and Mary Ward The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The number of people inspecting rentals in Sydney’s city and east has more than doubled from last year. We spoke to some of those in the Saturday queue.
Inspections for rentals in Sydney’s inner and eastern suburbs are attracting more than double the prospective tenants than last year, as thousands of the city’s renters continue their search for a place to call home.
Domain data shows the number of rental check-ins – people who gave their personal details to an agent to enter a property, a common practice at inspections – per listing in the city’s eastern suburbs was up 145 per cent in February compared to the same month the previous year.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/the-faces-of-sydney-s-rental…
# Must read, Hot topic NSW, Housing market, Personal stories, Renting culture.Independents call out old age homeless crisis
Duncan Murray South Coast Register (No paywall)They're a group often left out of the housing crisis conversation, but many older Australians are finding themselves homeless at a time in their lives when stability is most important.
An alliance of independent candidates and MPs in NSW is calling for the major parties to help stem the issue by lowering the priority age for social housing from 80 and introducing a specialist housing support service for older people.
https://www.southcoastregister.com.au/story/8122185/independents…
# Must read, Hot topic NSW, Homelessness, Older people, State Government.I was evicted and the law didn’t help. But I’m one of the lucky ones
Laura Chung The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Finding a home is stressful at the best of times, let alone when rents are sky-high and thousands of people are in the same boat. I’d seen the viral videos of tenants lining up like sardines to inspect a rental, but hoped I’d never join them.
That was until, a few months ago, my flatmate and I were told we had 60 days to vacate our property (despite the legal requirement being 90 days). We’d been on a rolling lease and had not signed a new agreement, so were entitled to the full three months.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/i-was-evicted-and-the-law-di…
# Hot topic NSW, Eviction, Housing market, Personal stories.Greens demand fix for housing crisis as crossbench power predicted to grow
Tom Rabe and Alexandra Smith The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The NSW Greens are preparing to capitalise on a Labor-led minority government, pushing for a restriction on the sale of public land and for an extra 100,000 social and public homes to be built to address the state’s growing housing crisis.
With the prospect of a hung parliament appearing more likely ahead of Saturday’s state election, the Greens are increasingly flexing their muscles in key policy areas they will demand action on.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/greens-demand-fix-for-housin…
# Hot topic NSW, Homelessness, Housing market, State Government.Housing crisis threatens to impose a lifetime of renting
The Sydney Morning Herald The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Queues of renters outside weekend rental property inspections have become a familiar sight in parts of the city in an increasingly heated competition for a dwindling supply of housing stock.
As our reports on the rental property market crisis show, inspections for rentals in Sydney’s inner and eastern suburbs have more than doubled in a year.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/housing-crisis-threatens-to-…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent, Housing affordability, Housing market.Auction-style rental bids spur competition among desperate tenants
Amber Schultz WA Today (No paywall)A loophole in rental laws is leading to bidding wars between desperate tenants fighting for a limited number of homes in a competitive market.
A ban introduced in December prevents NSW real estate and property agents from soliciting offers to pay more than the advertised rent to secure the lease – but this does not stop them from accepting offers above the asking price.
https://www.watoday.com.au/national/nsw/auction-style-rental-bid…
# Hot topic, TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Housing market, Personal stories.“On the Political Economy of Housing and the Affordability Crisis”
Václav Walach Antipode Online (No paywall)With the deepening crisis of housing affordability (Lee et al.2022), there is a strong incentive to explore non-mainstream approaches to the study of housing. Following on the post-Global Financial Crisis expansion of political economy perspectives (Jacobs et al. 2022), this interview focuses on the approach that refuses to see housing merely as a commodity whose production and distribution is primarily driven by individual self-interest and market forces. Political economists recognize economic activity as deeply embedded within wider sets of social and political relations, which are linked to the interests of different social groups and institutions, including the state. While mainstream economists seem favoring the view of the state as an essentially restrictive entity that imposes constraints on market relations, political economists, on the contrary, emphasize its productive character. Very often it is state involvement which creates markets and market actors.
https://antipodeonline.org/2023/03/10/the-political-economy-of-h…
# International, Public and community housing, Home, Housing affordability, Planning and development.NSW Labor woos rental tenants as Liberals court regions
AAP Newswire Countrynews.com.au (No paywall)NSW Labor is promising to tighten data rules for real estate agents to better protect rental tenants if they win government as the Liberals try to firm up their regional vote.
There is little regulation about how data is stored and protected when renters hand over their driver's licence details, work and address history along with their bank statements, Labor says.
https://www.countrynews.com.au/national/nsw-labor-woos-rental-te…
# Hot topic, New policy announcement NSW, Privacy and access, Rent, Regional NSW.