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
There’s a nasty collision of hate and housing
Elizabeth Knight The Sydney Morning Herald (Soft Paywall)There was a concerning tenor to the mass anti-immigration rallies over the weekend, one that is bleeding into the mainstream debate on housing – a nasty collision of hate and housing. There were extreme and disruptive elements among the thousands who joined the protests, but there were also moderate people who believe they have been locked out of the housing market by several years of post-COVID, above-average immigration.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/there-s-a-nasty-coll…
# Must read, Hot topic Australia, .Tax breaks for investors unfair but there’s no quick fix, housing affordability boss says
Patrick Commins The Guardian (No paywall)Generous tax breaks for property investors are leading to “deeply inequitable” outcomes, the chair of the government’s National Housing Supply and Affordability Council (NHSAC) has warned. Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, a former chief executive of property developer Mirvac, said there was no easy or quick fix to Australia’s housing crisis. NHSAC’s state of the housing system report in May estimated that Labor would fall more than 260,000 homes short of its 1.2m target over the five years to 2029. “We shouldn’t be happy with 938,000 (estimated homes built), or 1.2m either,” Lloyd-Hurwitz said. “Certainly the more housing we can produce the better.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/28/tax-break…
# Australia, .New research shows where to build well located social housing
AHURI (No paywall)New AHURI research has identified priority locations for building ‘well located’ social housing. Well located homes are in places where tenants can easily access amenities including health care, schools, public transport and jobs. The research mapped where social housing is located compared to local services across Australia. The research found that 70% of well located suburbs had less than 5% social housing. For example, suburbs like Haymarket (NSW), Melbourne CBD (VIC) and Brisbane City (QLD) each had only 0.3% social housing. In comparison, many suburbs with poor access to amenities had much higher rates of social housing.
https://www.ahuri.edu.au/analysis/news/new-research-shows-where-…
# Research alert Australia, Public and community housing.The amount of personal info Australian renters have to hand over is ‘staggering’
Lina Przhedetsky Pursuit (No paywall)The New South Wales government has introduced a bill to better protect renters’ personal information when they apply for properties. But other Australian states and territories are lagging behind, leaving many renters with little choice but to hand over excessive amounts of personal information when they apply for properties. As median rents continue to climb, and the national vacancy rate hovers around 1.2 per cent, renters report feeling pressured to use third-party rental apps when applying for a property.
https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/the-amount-of-personal-i…
# Hot topic Australia, Starting a tenancy.Negative gearing on short-stay rentals costs Australia up to $556m a year, report estimates
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Tax breaks for investors using houses as short-stay accommodation could be costing Australian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars per year, according to a new report by Everybody’s Home. The short-stay subsidy report estimates that the budget could be losing between $111m and $556m in forgone revenue this financial year through negative gearing deductions claimed on short-stay rental properties.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/01/negative-…
# Australia, .Tasmanian caravan park won't let terminally ill resident sell home to fund treatment
Ashleigh Barraclough ABC (No paywall)A long-term resident of a caravan park in northern Tasmania has terminal cancer and wants to sell her home to help cover costs, but is being told she can't: For about 14 years, Roslyn Grima has lived in her own little home in a seaside caravan park in northern Tasmania. "It was an amazing place, I'd come to visit a friend and the next week I thought, 'Oh, I'm buying one of these places,'" the 65-year-old said. "Now it's my home and it's beautiful and I absolutely love it here."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-01/beauty-point-tourist-park…
# Australia, Land lease communities.Inside The Property Crisis: With John Wright
Walk the World ()This is a thought-provoking dive into the the root cause of the property crisis, and what may lay ahead. What do Marie Antionette, a lump of coal, and the Kingdom of Great Britain have to do with the Australian Property Crisis and Policy Change? The answer according to Associate Professor John Wright centres on the concept of Carry Trades. When you examine the property crisis through this lens, things change, and factors like supply and migration become mere symptoms of a greater ill. Worse, he says, all carry trades create the conditions for their own collapse. The capital imbalance is already here and will accelerate.
# Research alert, Video Australia, .Australia’s rental crisis pushes mum Rebecca to move 42 times in 37 years
Duncan Evans news.com.au (No paywall)Rebecca is living out the stark reality of Australia’s housing crisis. Over 37 years, the 58-year-old mother of two has moved 42 times in a never-ending struggle to secure a stable, long-term rental. “It’s very difficult to put down roots in a community,” she told NewsWire. “You can’t volunteer, you can’t foster children, there are an awful lot of things you can’t do if you’re not in a secure rental.” She says an increase in short-stay holiday homes, including Airbnbs, has degraded the supply of rental options for her. In one instance, she said she had secured a rental in the Adelaide Hills, but then her landlord sold the property and the new owner transformed it into a short-stay offering.
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/australias-r…
# Australia, Rent, Starting a tenancy.