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 NSW tree-change towns where rents have soared
Kate Burke Domain (No paywall)Rapid rent rises across regional NSW have left tenants scrambling to find affordable homes, and left some priced out of their local community. Rents across more than half of NSW regional council areas jumped by at least 10 per cent over the year to September, the latest Domain Rent Report, released on Thursday, shows. However, the pace of rent hikes is easing, and industry figures have reported a slowdown in the extraordinary demand that saw rental vacancies plummet and asking rents soar. Still, there is little sign of any price relief for tenants. ... Tenants in such regional centres were increasingly facing rental hikes and no-grounds evictions, said Ron Maxwell, chief executive of non-for-profit Verto, which runs a tenants’ advice and advocacy service in south west NSW. “We’re seeing among families an increasing risk of homelessness. A lot of vulnerable clients are struggling to keep up,” he said, adding some had been priced out of their local communities. Maxwell said some renters were being handed no-ground evictions, only for their rental to return to the market for a considerably higher rental price.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/the-nsw-tree-change-towns-w…
# NSW, Rent, Housing affordability, Housing market, No-grounds evictions, Regional NSW.More than half of NSW MPs own more than one property
Tamsin Rose and Michael McGowan The Guardian (No paywall)More than half of MPs in the New South Wales lower house own multiple residential properties, prompting concerns the state’s politicians are “blind” to record increases in rental prices. Amid a fresh push for reform to the rental market, an analysis of MP disclosure records show landlords are disproportionately represented on Macquarie Street. Of the 93 MPs in the legislative assembly, 54% own more than one property, with more than a quarter listing three or more. ... A longtime advocate for tenants rights in NSW, Patterson-Ross said he believed it was possible MPs were “biased” when it came to rental issues. “It’s clear [that owning properties] can influence their decision making,” he said. Together, 45 Coalition MPs own 82 properties, averaging 1.8 per person. This is slightly higher than the Labor average of 1.7 properties per MP. Also, check out the Tenants' Union's blog at: [https://www.tenants.org.au/blog/citizens-assemblies-and-renting-policy-avenue-fair-rental-reform]
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/14/more-than…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents.‘Here’s what’s missing - everything’: No schools and no services but houses keep going up
Jordan Baker The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The Clarke family had a house in Kings Langley, but as their brood of boys grew, they needed something bigger. They bought in Sydney’s north-west growth area, where they could afford a brand new home with a surfeit of bedrooms and space. Plenty of other families had the same idea. Within a few years their once sleepy suburb, Marsden Park, became one of the child capitals of Sydney, with more children aged under nine – one in five residents – than almost any other suburb. While there were plenty of homes for all those families and kids, it became clear to Libby Clarke that there wasn’t much else. The public primary was the size of a country school and now has 19 demountables. The closest shops were 20 minutes away; if she forgot milk, it was a 40-minute round trip, often in traffic. Trains came hourly, even at the peak. Narrow roads were choked. The hospital repeatedly promised for nearby Rouse Hill didn’t exist, and still doesn’t. Meanwhile, the population grows exponentially. ... Michelle Rowland, the Labor federal member for the north-west seat of Greenway ... said the problem was due to a long-term failure of different levels of government to coordinate. “Developers, basically, in a lot of aspects, they do have free rein,” she said. “The incentive of the developer is to maximise land use to maximise profit. Which is why you have a lot of residents complaining [about] what normally they’d call overdevelopment, but a lot of it is to do with a lack of trees, a lack of environmental controls, houses are close together, streets are narrow.”
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/here-s-what-s-missing-everyt…
# NSW, Families, Housing market, Planning and development, Sydney.‘It’s a crisis’: Rents in almost every Sydney suburb jumped in the past year
Tawar Razaghi Domain (No paywall)Angus Hook and his two housemates copped a $130 increase on their weekly rent bill in Sydney when their lease came up for renewal. They were told to accept the increase or leave by their property manager, who also said other tenants would be willing to pay even more. ... Sydney rents are higher than a year ago in a clear majority of suburbs, from highly sought-after inner-city pockets to more affordable areas, according to Domain data for the year to September. ... Western Sydney University associate professor in geography and urban studies in the school of social sciences Dr Emma Power said it was a landlord’s market, and this had far-reaching implications for Sydney as tenants cut costs on other essentials to keep a roof over their heads. “In my research, I see [tenants] cut back on their healthcare needs and their nutrition. As a society, these have long-term consequences and social costs,” she said.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/it-s-a-crisis-rents-in-almo…
# NSW, Rent, Health, Housing market, Sydney.‘Painful To See’: Rising Rents Contributed To A 10% Spike In Homelessness In NSW Since 2020
Aleksandra Bliszczyk (No paywall)Homelessness in New South Wales has increased 10 per cent since the pandemic began, a shocking report released on Monday found. Meanwhile, rents are skyrocketing and rental vacancy has plummeted which has made it increasingly difficult and distressing to find a stable home. The Aftershock report was published by Impact Economics and Policy and commissioned by the NSW Council Of Social Service (NCOSS), Community Housing Industry Association (CHIA) NSW, Aboriginal Community Housing Industry Association (ACHIA) and Homelessness NSW. It found 3,700 more people are homeless in NSW today compared to the start of 2020 and, in the same time frame, as many as 54,000 households have experienced increased housing stress. (Pedestrian TV) You will find the full report at: [https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61e32e62c8c8337e6fd7a1e6/t/6345fd1eba82ac3d4eef403d/1665531175264/IE_Aftershock_Housing_V5b_SPREADS%5B82%5D.pdf]
https://www.pedestrian.tv/news/homelessness-nsw-risen-since-pand…
# NSW, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Housing market.'That's the One to Put in a Blender'
Alissa Walker (Paywall)Los Angeles’s renters are the second-most cost-burdened in the country, with half of all households spending 50 percent or more of their monthly income on rent. One 2020 study showed that the city’s Black, Latino, and Spanish-speaking households were most likely to experience severe rent burdens, making permanent cutbacks to food and transportation spending in order to keep a roof over their heads. Stratospheric housing prices have put home ownership out of reach for all but the very wealthy, and an acute shortage of affordable apartments leaves tenants exceptionally vulnerable to displacement. And while renters account for 63 percent of occupied housing units in L.A. and represent a majority in 12 of L.A.’s 15 council districts, none of L.A.’s council members are renters. (According to one estimate, a majority of them are landlords.) At the state level, where policies like rent control are passed, nearly one in four of the legislature’s members are landlords, and the California Association of Realtors, a powerful anti-renter lobbying group, is the second-largest donor to the state’s Democratic Party. What all of this amounts to is a supermajority of L.A. tenants that has very little political power. (NewYork Curbed)
https://www.curbed.com/2022/10/la-city-council-leaked-audio-raci…
# International, Rent, Landlords and agents, Local Government.Rent Going Up? One Company’s Algorithm Could Be Why.
Heather Vogell with data analysis by Haru Coryne and Ryan Little (No paywall)Texas-based RealPage’s YieldStar software helps landlords set prices for apartments across the U.S. With rents soaring, critics are concerned that the company’s proprietary algorithm is hurting competition. On a summer day last year, a group of real estate tech executives gathered at a conference hall in Nashville to boast about one of their company’s signature products: software that uses a mysterious algorithm to help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants. “Never before have we seen these numbers,” said Jay Parsons, a vice president of RealPage ... Drama over rising rent costs — now a key driver of inflation — has been increasingly public. The year before the pandemic, roughly 46% of renters in the U.S. spent more than 30% of their income on rent and therefore met the definition of cost-burdened, Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies found. In mid-September in Washington, D.C., angry protesters disrupted the normally sedate yearly conference held by the National Multifamily Housing Council. Before security ejected them, they seized the stage and recounted how their families had been harmed by an inability to find safe, affordable housing. At the center of the acrimonious debate has been RealPage’s Jay Parsons. [Read the full article in 'ProPublica')
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realp…
# International, Rent, Campaigns and law reform, Housing affordability, Housing market.The lush gullies hiding the hard truths of Queensland’s housing crisis
Joe Hinchliffe The Guardian (No paywall)Amid Gympie’s green hills, tents jut out from gullies and highway rest stops, pregnant women sleep in parks and the homeless keep lifesaving medication cool in Eskies. This is just the visible fruit of a crisis coursing unseen through streets and homes of this regional city. Ravaged by natural disaster and buffeted by shockwaves sent through the property market by the pandemic, Gympie exemplifies a housing crisis that is gripping Queensland. “We’ve applied for 380 houses so far and we’ve been knocked back from everyone,” says a pregnant Marteaka Browne, who with Reg Marshall joined the ranks of the tent dwellers a month ago, after they were asked to leave their rental home. “There’s nowhere else in Gympie to go.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/16/the-lush-…
# Australia, Rent, Affordable housing, Homelessness, Housing market.