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
‘Punitive’ rental laws condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, prison and death
Giovanni Torre (No paywall)Punitive rental laws are condemning Aboriginal families to homelessness, child removal, prison and even death, a WA parliamentary inquiry heard on Monday. Several Noongar advocates spoke to the Inquiry into the Financial Administration of Homelessness Services, including former residents of the “tent cities” that were established in Perth. Also appearing were families who have been made homeless due to no reason or fault evictions, and relatives of people who have died homeless on Perth streets over the past two years. New data published in August showed Aboriginal people remain radically over-represented in Western Australia’s homeless population. (National Indigenous Times)
https://www.nit.com.au/punitive-rental-laws-condemning-aborigina…
# Australia, Aboriginal renters, Eviction, Homelessness, Housing market, No-grounds evictions, Race and ethnicity.Govt signs off on eviction ban from November to March
Micheal Lehane (No paywall)From Ireland ... The Government has signed off on an ban on evictions to run from 1 November until the end of March. It will mean that if a tenant is issued with an eviction notice from next month to the end of March 2023, it cannot be implemented until April. However there will be exceptions for those who do not pay their rent or damage a property. (RTE)
https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2022/1018/1329820-cabinet-evict…
# International, Eviction, Rent, Housing market.Think private renting is hard? First Nations people can be excluded from the start
Wendy Stone, Andrew Peters, Piret Veeroja and Zoe Goodall The Conversation (No paywall)Private rental housing provides homes, often long-term homes, for one in four Australian households. People can experience various forms of discrimination when seeking, living in or leaving a rental property, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples it’s another one of many barriers they face. Our new research presents their views about what needs to change in Victoria’s private rental sector. Read the report at: [https://www.rentingcommissioner.vic.gov.au/the-aboriginal-private-rental-access-project-report-and-recommendations-have-been-delivered]
https://theconversation.com/think-private-renting-is-hard-first-…
# Australia, Aboriginal renters, Discrimination, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Race and ethnicity.Sydney’s new ‘Apple-style’ shop to slash energy bills
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)New tech is coming to Australia that aims to slash electricity prices for households and small businesses by up to 120 per cent – with excess energy generated sold back to the grid. Off the back of increases in electricity prices so far this year, and dire warnings of hikes of up to 35 per cent in 2023, an Apple-style one-stop shop selling and advising on a whole range of integrated green products is to open early next year in Sydney. “This really delivers the home of the future and the more quickly we can accelerate our path there, the better,” said Australian clean-tech entrepreneur Chris Williams. ... “The epicentre of it all is the new Heartbeat technology which synchs everything together, optimises the solar battery and makes it all work to provide the best possible outcome for every customer.”
https://www.smh.com.au/property/living/sydney-s-new-apple-style-…
# Australia, Utilities water energy internet, Climate change, Sydney.Barangaroo is rubbish and now its wretched offspring are spawning across Sydney
Philip Thalis The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Barangaroo is a symbol of squandered opportunities to make a better Sydney. ... I was part of the winning team ... for the 2005-6 international competition for this 22 hectares of publicly owned foreshore ... The foundation of our plan was that the entire foreshore – 50 per cent of the site – be transformed into a continuous and inalienable public park. To tie this long-isolated area into the broader city, we proposed new public transport and a generous and connective street system, including a new park-edge street (now debased as Barangaroo Avenue) as the western complement to Macquarie Street. A range of new public places and facilities was proposed, including theatres, community buildings, outdoor event spaces, major site-specific public art, a playing field, and floating harbour pools beside the green headland. Development would include a significant percentage of affordable housing and work spaces. Logically, the government would progressively build the amenable and characterful new public spaces, enabling enhanced individual development sites to be marketed to a broad range of competitors. Instead, Barangaroo over the past 15 years has become the antithesis of our winning plan. ... Barangaroo stands as the physical manifestation of an opaque and corrupted process. Also, read Helen Lochhead's opinion piece entitled: 'Public interest consistently sacrificed in Barangaroo evolution' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/public-interest-consistently-sacrificed-in-barangaroo-evolution-20221014-p5bpwv.html] Read Clover Moore's opinion piece entitled: 'Barangaroo’s "phallic forest" a monument to Sydney’s impotence' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/barangaroo-s-phallic-forest-a-monument-to-sydney-s-impotence-20221014-p5bpwy.html]. Read Megan Gorey's article entitled: '"What are the next steps?": Final stage of Barangaroo in limbo' in 'Th Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/what-are-the-next-steps-final-stage-of-barangaroo-in-limbo-20221005-p5bnee.html] Read Julie Power's article entitled: '"A symbol of wealth": Architects give their verdict on Crown’s Barangaroo tower' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/a-symbol-of-wealth-architects-give-their-verdict-on-crown-s-barangaroo-tower-20221006-p5bnr7.html]. Read Michael Koziol's article entitled: '"One chance to get this right": Government orders shorter, smaller buildings at Central Barangaroo' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/one-chance-to-get-this-right-government-orders-shorter-smaller-buildings-at-central-barangaroo-20221019-p5br6q.html]. Read Julie Power's article entitled: '"One lady shed tears": Battle to recognise Barangaroo’s rich Indigenous history' in 'The Sydney Morning Herald' at: [https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/one-lady-shed-tears-battle-to-recognise-barangaroo-s-rich-indigenous-history-20221006-p5bnpw.html].
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/barangaroo-is-rubbish-and-no…
# NSW, Affordable housing, History, Planning and development, State Government, Sydney.It's never been harder for Australians to find a rental under $400. Here's why
Jessica Bahr SBS (No paywall)With Australia's housing prices stubbornly high and the cash rate continuing to rise,
the number of affordable rentals has hit a record low, according to a new report. A market insight report from PropTrack found the share of properties listed for rent on realestate.com.au for less than $400 per week fell to a record low of 19.3 per cent of listings in September 2022. This represents a decline from 41.8 per cent in March 2020. Experts say they expect the supply of affordable rental listings to keep dropping over coming months due to lower vacancy rates, low levels of first-home buyers purchasing and increasing migration. Here's what you need to know.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/its-never-been-harder-for-au…
# Australia, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market.With Queensland renters desperate, calls for compassion from landlords are no substitute for housing policy
Ben Smee The Guardian (No paywall)The Queensland housing minister, Leeanne Enoch, this week urged “compassion” from real estate agents, after revelations some had advised landlords to hike rents by more than 20%. ... [But] Governments are reluctant to intervene in the property market due to political risk but runaway prices mean the calculation is changing. ... “Housing policy is a Janus-faced thing,” Hal Pawson, the associate director of the City Futures Research Centre at the University of NSW, told the Guardian last month. “It wants to do two things at the same time. It wants to make housing affordable for everybody. It also wants to enable people who own properties to accumulate wealth. “The two things are in tension. We have a raft of policy settings that are, in my opinion, not in balance between those two objectives – they’re strongly weighted in favour of wealth accumulation, against housing being more affordable. And there’s a need to reset the balance.” Meanwhile, check out the article by Rebecca Levingston and Antonia O'Flaherty entitled: 'Homeless women say Queensland's housing summit must consider real solutions to crisis as families grow desperate' on the ABC at: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-19/qld-homeless-women-people-living-under-bridge-housing/101550808]. Read Joe Hinchliffe's article entitled: 'Proposal for motels to house homeless people to be brought to Queensland summit' in 'The Guardian' at: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/20/proposal-for-motels-to-house-homeless-people-to-be-brought-to-queensland-summit]. Read Eden Gillespie's article entitled: 'Pressure mounts on Queensland’s domestic violence refuges as housing crisis bites' in 'The Guardian' at: [https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/19/pressure-mounts-on-queenslands-domestic-violence-refuges-as-housing-crisis-bites].
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/19/with-rent…
# Australia, Domestic violence, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market, State Government, Tax.I was given a house for free – but it already belonged to someone else
Anne Elizabeth Moore The Guardian (No paywall)Miraculously, Tomeka Langford is willing to talk to me. The 47-year-old Black woman is a long-standing Detroiter. A career pharm tech with four kids and six grandkids, her family has lived in the city ever since her grandparents came up from the south. I am white, single and childless. In 2016, I was given a house by Write a House, a short-lived Detroit-based organization founded in 2011 to award homes to low-income scribes. The gift was meant to support writers with some of the city’s plentiful housing stock – and thus change the stories that get told about Detroit. It was, on paper, a great idea. But the house I was given already belonged to someone: Tomeka Langford. I didn’t know it at the time. Neither did Tomeka.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/oct/18/detroit-house-fr…
# International, Home ownership, Housing market, Local Government, Personal stories, Race and ethnicity.