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
Evictions of Aboriginal families in Perth under scrutiny, as FOI documents released
Claire Moodie and Alex Mann ABC (No paywall)Nicole Shegog turns her head away and the tears start to fall as she recalls a bailiff appearing on her doorstep in Perth's southern suburbs in the run up to Christmas 2015. It was late in the day and according to Ms Shegog, the man handed a letter to her goddaughter, who was 14 at the time, saying the family had until the morning to leave as the locks were being changed at 10am the next day. ... Successive state governments have consistently said statistics on the number of Aboriginal families and children being evicted are not available. ... Shelter WA chief executive Michelle MacKenzie is hoping the new Housing Minister will mean a new era of collaboration and transparency.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-03/aboriginal-tenants-evicte…
# Australia, Aboriginal renters, Eviction, Public and community housing, Homelessness, State Government.Meet your Waterloo: the public realm deserves better than this airbrushed inner-city Camelot
Elizabeth Farrelly The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)It’s a strange illogic that makes us interpret government harshness – border cruelty, welfare cutbacks, pre-emptive heritage demolitions, mass tree-lopping, hyper-dense developments – as good financial management. If it hurts, it has to be good, especially if it hurts someone else. There’s no evidence such harshness makes the world a better place. After 40 years, we know trickle-down is as real as the tooth fairy. And it’s never the wealthy who are hurt. ... But public ownership and vulnerable occupancy make soft targets for harsh policies. This week, they allowed Planning Minister Rob Stokes to rezone Waterloo South for more than four times the existing dwelling numbers, largely private. ... The result is down-the-line neoliberal heartlessness in action: the wholesale destruction of a vital and self-supporting community – a community that runs its own support groups and bicycle-mending workshops – for the sake of yet another hyper-dense Green Square lookalike. That we still can’t lift our sights higher than this is, quite simply, depressing. ... What should happen instead? Government should prioritise the public realm – including the public housing. It should create beautiful streets and lanes, set building heights to ensure sun access to streets and apartments, plant mature trees, install street furniture and choreograph the public realm around public delight. It should take a leaf out of Sirius architect Tao Gofers’ book and work to ensure those with least access to our common wealth have dignified streets and living spaces. This takes money, time and expertise – not much, but some.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/meet-your-waterloo-the-publi…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Estate renewal, Human rights, Local Government, State Government.'We thought we were Australian’: Melbourne tower lockdown lives on in legacy of trauma
Margaret Simons The Guardian (No paywall)We don’t realise the value of suburban rhythms, or even see them clearly, until they are ripped away. There are the children clattering up the hill to school and the queue at the post office – including so many ethnicities, every form of dress. There are the men hanging out in the African cafes and the elderly Chinese in tai chi classes at the foot of the public housing towers. We don’t see the premise that we are safe and free or the implicit promise that those from war-torn lands who have been accepted as refugees can become Australian. That they belong. One year ago, at 4pm on a chilly winter afternoon in the inner northern suburbs of Melbourne, many of those assumptions collapsed. ... Nine public housing towers, built as part of the postwar slum clearance and now looming over the gentrified inner suburbs of North Melbourne and Flemington, were placed into a hard lockdown with no warning. This remains the most severe Covid outbreak response implemented in Australia. Never before, nor since, have restrictions on movement been imposed without warning.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jul/04/we-though…
# Hot topic Australia, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19.Cars hired for a place to sleep, Lake Macquarie homelessness forum hears
Sage Swinton (Paywall)The online forum involved more than 60 people from various groups and organisations who deal with homelessness. Providers, including Nova for Women and Children, Hunter Tenants' Advice and Advocacy Service, Cardiff's Our Backyard, Hunter Community Alliance and Baptist Care, spoke about the dire situation they and their clients currently faced. It's pretty much in crisis at the moment. We've heard people are sleeping in their cars, but also hiring private rental cars and sleeping in those because there's no other option. There's only around a 0.2 per cent vacancy rate of rental properties and the rental market is well above the affordability rate. It should only be around 30 per cent of a person's income, but it's much higher than that at the moment and it would be causing a lot of financial distress to families. It's really middle income earners that are affected, people who haven't been homeless before. It's not just low socioeconomic people who are impacted. There's people who are landlords themselves. They're leasing out those properties and renting themselves, but they're being evicted from the place that they live in so they're sort of between a rock and a hard place. (Newcastle Herald)
https://www.newcastleherald.com.au/story/7322375/cars-hired-for-…
# NSW, Rent, Homelessness, Housing market, Regional NSW.This new refuge in Melbourne is providing much-needed support to older homeless women
Gloria Kalache SBS (No paywall)Providing women aged over 50 a safe haven and access to services helping them rebuild their lives, The Gardenhouse is believed to be the first facility of its kind in Australia.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/this-new-refuge-in-melbourne-is-prov…
# Australia, Homelessness, Older people, Women.Chinese foreign investors have cooled on Australian properties, but overseas buyers are tipped to return
Nssim Khadem ABC (No paywall)Chinese foreign investors who abandoned the Australian property market last financial year could soon return, according to real estate agents and analysts who say enquiries and sales are on the rise. But they predict Australian property is likely to be a more attractive option for overseas buyers who want to move here and buy land or large homes when our borders reopen, rather than foreign investors who face high taxes.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-02/chinese-overseas-buyers-a…
# Australia, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Paris court fines Airbnb $9.6 million for illegal listings
Romain Dillet (No paywall)A court in Paris has fined Airbnb, the popular marketplace for vacation rentals. According to the court, the tech company has failed to comply with local regulation when it comes to listing your apartment on the platform. Airbnb should pay $9.6 million (€8.08 million) to the city of Paris. This decision has been years in the making. Like many major cities around the world, Airbnb has had some impact on the housing market in Paris. Many apartments disappeared from the housing market as they became full-time Airbnb apartments, leading to high rents. (TechCrunch)
https://techcrunch.com/2021/07/01/paris-court-fines-airbnb-9-6-m…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Short-term holiday letting.Construction watchdog: Body corporates are not reporting known defects
Matt O'Sullivan The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The NSW construction watchdog has major concerns that body corporates are underreporting serious defects in high-rise apartment buildings to government officials charged with cleaning up the construction industry and restoring public confidence. A survey of more than 500 buildings in NSW built in the past six years found that 36 per cent had serious defects. Of those with defects, just 17 per cent of the buildings had already been reported to the regulator.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/construction-watchdog-body-c…
# NSW, Strata, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.