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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
The Blackstone rebellion: how one country took on the world’s biggest commercial landlord
Hettie O'Brien The Guardian (No paywall)Blackstone is the largest commercial landlord in history. Over the past two decades, it has quietly taken control of apartment blocks, care homes, student housing, railway arches, film studios, offices, hotels, logistics warehouses and datacentres. Blackstone doesn’t just own real estate, it owns everything – or that’s how it can feel when you start to examine its bewildering array of assets. ... In most places where it began to buy up residential properties, Blackstone faced little opposition from governments or politicians. That is, until it arrived in a small Scandinavian country, which, when confronted with the indifferent force of this global real estate company, decided Blackstone had gone too far. “Blackstone was like a boxer walking into a heavy right-hand hook to the jaw,” Curt Liliegreen, a Danish housing economist, told me. “They didn’t see it coming. They picked totally the wrong place.” ... In July 2020, the Danish parliament passed what became informally known as the Blackstone Law, or Blackstone indgreb. “We were holding our breath until the very moment the law was passed and the ink was dry,” said Anders Svendsen, a lawyer for Denmark’s national tenants union. As well as preventing new landlords from raising the rent for five years, the legislation also prohibits landlords from offering tenants money to move out. (They must also upgrade a building’s energy efficiency before increasing the rent.) The law targets all landlords, pension funds and big investors. Blackstone was just the wedge that propped open the door. The tenants union even considered sending the company a bunch of flowers.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/sep/29/blackstone-rebe…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents.A new era for housing?
Peter Mares (No paywall)The biggest investment in social housing since Kevin Rudd was prime minister won’t be enough to stop life getting tougher for low-income tenants
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Federal Government, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market, International, Local Government, State Government.Connect to Home Competition
Tenants Queensland (No paywall)Monday 3 October 2022 is International Tenants’ Day (ITD). International Tenants’ Day has been celebrated annually on the first Monday in October since 1986 as a day to promote and raise awareness of tenants’ rights across the world. Tenants Queensland invites all tenants across Queensland to participate in our competition. Share with us and tell us with your entry why it is so important for you to “CONNECT TO HOME”
# Australia, Rent, Campaigns and law reform.US: Budget Cuts Put Public Housing Tenants at Risk
(No paywall)From the United States ... Decades of inadequate federal funding have jeopardized the living conditions of public housing residents and exacerbated the affordable housing crisis, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The 63-page report, “‘We Deserve to Have a Place to Live:’ How US Underfunding Public Housing Harms Rights in New York, New Mexico, and Beyond,” examines the impact of a decline in federal funding for public housing, which has been accompanied by a modest increase in investment in affordable housing programs that rely on the private sector, such as voucher and subsidy programs. Human Rights Watch found that budget cuts have led to deteriorating living conditions in public housing in New York City, as well as in northern New Mexico, and have reduced the public housing stock nationwide. It also finds that other affordable housing programs, which rely on the private sector, have often failed to guarantee long-term affordability for people with the lowest incomes. Read the full report at: [https://www.hrw.org/report/2022/09/27/we-deserve-have-place-live/how-us-underfunding-public-housing-harms-rights-new]
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/09/27/us-budget-cuts-put-public-ho…
# International, Public and community housing, Anti-social behaviour, Federal Government, Human rights.Tenants of this public housing block thought they smelled a dead rat. It turned out to be their neighbour
Mayeta Clark ABC (No paywall)The first thing Peter "Pierre" Gawronski noticed was a smell. Strange smells weren't that unusual in the Sydney public housing estate where Pierre lived, but this one seemed to hang around. He tried ignoring it, but it seemed to get worse. At first he assumed it was a dead rat. He says he'd come across seven of the little critters in 14 months. He reported the smell to his local Housing office, which sent contractors out, but the smell lingered. Soon, Pierre was sleeping in the laundry to get away from it. Neither repeated conversations back and forth between Housing and Pierre, nor repeated visits by contractors to Northcott estate, seemed to get rid of the smell. Five days after he first reported the smell, he noticed it seemed to be coming from underneath the flat of his neighbour — a man living with a disability ... [who] hadn't been seen for days. Pierre got a sinking feeling.... Ms Jackson {the shadow minister for water, housing and homelessness] says that the current plight of public housing tenants has been brought on by years of underinvestment in maintenance and new stock by successive state governments and that it's now a crisis. She admits her own Labor Party must shoulder some of the blame for this. Also, listen to Mayeta Clark on ABC RN's podcast entitled 'Faulty Towers 02 | They thought he was another rat' at: [https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/backgroundbriefing/they-thought-he-was-another-rat-surry-hills-public-housing/101487300]
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-01/why-tenants-northcott-pub…
# Audio, Video NSW, Public and community housing, Repairs, Disability, Health, State Government.NCC 2022 is now available on NCC Online
Australian Building Codes Board (No paywall)The ABCB is pleased to announce that NCC 2022 has been made available on NCC Online. NCC 2022 will be adopted on 1 May 2023, with a transition period to 1 October 2023 for the modern homes provisions for energy efficiency, condensation mitigation and livable (accessible) housing.
Until these adoption dates, NCC 2019 Amendment 1 remains in force.
https://mailchi.mp/abcb.gov.au/ncc-2022-is-here?e=694d3465e3
# Australia, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Airbnb owners targeted by council to tackle Sydney’s housing crisis
Andrew Taylor The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)An eastern suburbs council wants to financially penalise owners of Airbnb-type rentals, which it blames for driving up the cost of housing. Randwick City Council last week voted to investigate rate variations “or other appropriate responses” for holiday rentals and look at the responses of other councils where “short-term letting is exacerbating housing shortages and affordability”. ... Tenants’ Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said Airbnb-type properties were one factor contributing to the housing affordability crisis. “Although we need to recognise that in an area like Randwick there was already such a shortfall in genuinely affordable housing because it was an attractive place to live,” he said. Bill Randolph, professor at the University of NSW’s City Futures Research Centre, said homeowners should be charged commercial rates for the period their property is let for Airbnb. “After all, they are businesses, not homes,” he said. “But it should only be for properties that are being let out in their entirety.” Randolph said the additional funds from higher council rates should be used to provide affordable housing in the area “as short-term lettings are clearly reducing the stock of longer-term lettings that are available”. Capping the number of days a property can be a short-term rental was “absolutely essential, especially in all areas with heavy short-term rental stock”, he said.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/airbnb-owners-targeted-by-co…
# TUNSW in the media NSW, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market, Local Government, Short-term holiday letting.The Side Eye: Reasonably clean and tidy
Toby Morris (No paywall)From New Zealand ... Cleaning a rental to a spotless level in the hopes of getting your bond back is a familiar feeling for renters – but are landlords expecting unfair standards? The Side Eye‘s Toby Morris looks at what the law says. (The Side Eye, a monthly non-fiction comic supported by NZ On Air) (The Spinoff)
https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/29-09-2022/the-side-eye-reasona…
# International, Bond, Rent.