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
Heritage rooming houses shut as pandemic hits vulnerable tenants
Simon Johanson The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The pandemic is forcing many of Melbourne’s rooming houses to shut their doors as social housing groups leave the sector and move vulnerable tenants to better digs. ... [Social housing group Unison chief executive] James King said the shift towards better apartment-style accommodation has accelerated as a result of COVID-19 after operators realised people living in close quarters couldn’t self isolate because of shared facilities like bathrooms and toilets, making them vulnerable to the pandemic.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/heritage-rooming-house…
# Australia, Boarders and lodgers, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.How the Polynesian Panthers stood up to landlords and their damp rentals
Brad Flahive and Alex Liu (No paywall)From the 1950s, New Zealand’s migrant communities lived in the homes that made up Auckland’s then working-class suburbs of Ponsonby and Grey Lynn.
Sickly mould, rotten floors and poor sanitation were a breeding ground for vermin rather than a habitable home for families. With nowhere else to turn, desperate families asked the Polynesian Panthers to step in. “We would tell these people to pay their rent in a separate account and show the landlords that the rent was being paid, and it would be available to them once they fixed up the property,” recalled Alec Toleafoa ...
https://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/business/residential-prope…
# History International, Rent, Repairs, Mould.Do millennials really prefer to rent – or have we just been cheated out of a proper home?
Arwa Mahdawi The Guardian (No paywall)Capitalism is reshaping the property market, locking younger generations out of buying somewhere to live and expecting us to be happy about it ... The year is 2070. Nobody owns a home any more; the concept of individuals possessing property has gone the way of the floppy disk. Instead, a few large corporations control all the world’s real estate and people “subscribe” to holistic housing solutions on their iPhone 78X in the same way they currently subscribe to Netflix. You can pay your monthly subscription in billionaire-backed cryptocurrency: BezosCoin, MuskCoin or ZuckCoin. If you default on your housing sub (nobody uses old-fashioned terms such as “rent” any more) you are dispatched to Mars to pay off your debt via indentured servitude in intergalactic Amazon warehouses.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/15/do-millenn…
# International, Rent, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Young people.Sydney’s desperate buyers push up demand for land
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)Simon D’Souza watched the screen with his heart in his mouth. He’d barely slept a wink the night before, fretting about what was to come, and now he felt his body tense with anxiety and anticipation. The figure on the Zoom screen was plucking numbers from a barrel, but this draw was for more, much more than a random prize. The result of this would determine the entire future for Simon, his fiancée Abi Hutchinson and their children, Beau, 2, and one-year-old Amber. “We knew there were 379 people in the draw but for only 31 lots of land,” Simon says. “So, we knew we’d be very lucky to get one, and I never win anything at things like that.” “They took out the first 10 numbers, and nothing. Then the next 10 numbers … and yes! We were number 26! My jaw dropped and I thought, ‘Oh my God!”. I was at work, so I immediately phoned Abi at home. She was gobsmacked too. We were so excited!” Welcome to buying land in the frenzied Sydney property market of 2021, a mission made even more frenetic by COVID-19.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/sydneys-desperate-buyers-push-up-…
# NSW, Homelessness, Housing market.More than 1250 families out on the street since rental moratorium ended
Josh Zimmerman (Paywall)Landlords have launched eviction proceedings against more than 1250 families since the rental moratorium ended in March. (The West Australian)
https://thewest.com.au/news/social/more-than-1250-families-out-o…
# Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19.Why are rental properties so sh*tty? Here’s why we should raise the minimum standards
Claire Bracken ABC (No paywall)Unless you’ve been living under a rock that your parents bought for you, you’ll know that young people aren’t really getting into the home-owning game. ... “Housing insecurity is not just the obvious: 'Gosh, I wonder if I'm gonna have a roof over my head next week'. [Hugh Mackay, the social researcher says] it's a much deeper psychological issue of: 'Am I being taken seriously as a member of this society? Or am I being overlooked?’" (ABC Triplej Hack)
https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/programs/hack/why-we-should-raise…
# Australia, Rent, Repairs, Tribunal NCAT, Human rights, Landlords and agents, Minimum habitability standards, Mould, Young people.S.F. spends more than $60K per tent at homeless sites. Now it's being asked for another $15 million for the program
(Paywall)If the Board of Supervisors and Mayor London Breed approve the funding proposal ... [Read on] (San Francisco Chronicle)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/S-F-officials-want-…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness.How America’s treeless streets are fueling inequality
Erum Salam and Aliya Uteuova The Guardian (No paywall)Every weekday at 6am, 68-year-old Ana Adelea-Lopez walks through her Houston neighborhood to the bus stop. On the way, she passes a series of apartment complexes, telephone poles and metal fences on a long stretch of sidewalk. For the entirety of her walk, there’s not a single tree in sight. “You can’t even be on the street because of the heat,” said Adelea-Lopez who takes the bus to her seamstress job. “There aren’t a lot of trees. There are a lot of apartments. A lot of cement.” Houston is a city of extreme heat: the hottest daily temperature last August peaked at 100F (38C). But like many other US metropolitan areas, how much heat you endure depends largely on where you live. That’s because Houston is a tale of two cities: one is sprawling with greenery, public parks and hundred-year-old oak trees, all of which can help mitigate the heat. The other is a bevy of strip malls stacked on top of concrete – which produces and absorbs more heat throughout the day. ... “South-west [Houston] is one of the poorest parts. That’s why people don’t care,” Adelea-Lopez said. “Just because we’re a Hispanic community and lower-income, we still deserve trees.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/28/houston-trees-sh…
# International, Health, Planning and development.