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
Four in 10 new apartment buildings have major defects: NSW Building Commissioner
Tawar Razaghi Domain (No paywall)Almost four in 10 new apartment buildings in NSW have serious defects, costing an average $331,829 per building to fix, a new survey has found, although resolutions are rare. Waterproofing (23 per cent) was the most common major defect followed by fire safety (14 per cent), while almost one in 10 buildings had structural and enclosure defects, which can include anything that protects homeowners from the elements, such as the roof or the facade, according to new research by the Strata Community Association NSW. A survey of 1400 strata managers of residential buildings of four storeys or higher built in the past year was completed as part of a joint initiative between the Office of the NSW Building Commissioner and the state’s peak strata body.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/four-in-10-new-apartment-building…
# NSW, Repairs, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.Profits over People: in-home care a cash bonanza for greedy aged providers
Sarah Russell (No paywall)A $53,000 home-care package gets just nine hours of support yet the government has slung suppliers an extra $6.5 billion. Dr Sarah Russell reports on aged care profiteers and finds self-management is the answer. The only aspect of in-home care for older people that makes the news is the ridiculously long queue for home care packages. Flying under the radar is the chronic rorting, with corporate providers skimming off vast profits. (Michael West Media)
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/profits-over-people-in-home-care-…
# Australia, Older people.If Chinese property giant Evergrande collapses, there's no telling the damage it could do in Australia
David taylor ABC (No paywall)The Evergrande debt crisis is not going away. It is, however, evolving. Financial markets still fear for the future of China's second largest property developer, though their focus has shifted.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-08/chinese-property-evergran…
# Australia, Housing market, International, Landlords and agents.Shade: bringing planners and health professionals together to provide critical infrastructure
Susan Thompson, Liz King, Jan Fallding and Nicola Groskops. City Futures (No paywall)Increasingly communities are rightly demanding a built environment that makes it easy for everyone to be healthy and well as they go about their daily activities. This is related to growing understandings about the critical health supportive role of the places where we live, work, play, and how we travel from one to the other. COVID-19 has sharpened our collective focus on this issue, particularly the importance of local neighbourhood public spaces, walking paths, cycleways and green parkland for good health and wellbeing.
https://blogs.unsw.edu.au/cityfutures/blog/2021/10/shade-bringin…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health, Planning and development.Here’s some money so you can save emissions and money on new homes in Victoria
Duncan Murray The Fifth Estate (No paywall)Builders and land developers in Victoria can still apply for a $4000 rebate for achieving a 7 star home rating, on up to four properties, in a move to accelerate change in line with the proposed new NCC 2022 standards.
https://thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/heres-som…
# Australia, Climate change, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.The Bank Of Mum And Dad Goes Through The Roof!
(No paywall)We look at the latest DFA survey data relating to how parents are helping their kids to enter the Australian property market. The totals are growing fast, despite the risks. But there are a number of questions to be asked, and trade-offs to be considered. (Digital Finance Analytics Blog)
https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/the-bank-of-mum-and-dad…
# Audio Australia, Home ownership, Housing market.New residents in fast-growing areas of Sydney to bear cost of rate rises
Msatt O'Sullivan The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)New residents in rapidly growing parts of Sydney will pay most of the more than $250 million in extra revenue that councils will be able to collect over four years after the NSW government accepted advice from the pricing regulator to align rates with population rises.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/new-residents-in-fast-growin…
# NSW, Housing market, Tax.Perrottet, Trump and their architecture of pie-eyed beauty
Elizabeth Farrelly The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)One of several things Perrottet and Trump share is a hatred of modern architecture. Why? Because, they say, it’s ugly. ... Perrottet’s anti-Modern spray last November was strictly of the “I don’t know much about architecture but I know what I like” variety, a calculated sop to populist anti-intellectualism. He picked soft targets which only the few, the knowledgeable, would defend – the Sirius, Seidler’s Blues Point Tower, White Bay power station and assorted charmless annexures to grand old buildings. ... Proudly aligning himself with the “architecturally unenlightened”, Perrottet declared: “The fact a building might photograph nicely at dusk – and thrill a coterie of architectural sophisticates with its bold articulation of the revolutionary maxims of Fifth-Wave-Neo-Post-Structuralist design theory – doesn’t count for much if it’s an eyesore.” So it’s all about beauty.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/perrottet-trump-and-their-ar…
# NSW, Heritage listings.