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
Investors look to buy homes to use as Airbnb rentals
Patrick Clark (No paywall)Investors hunting for returns in the frenzied U.S. real estate market are tapping a new strategy: building massive portfolios of houses to rent out on Airbnb. (The Spokeman Review)
https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/jun/25/investors-look-to-…
# International, Rent, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Short-term holiday letting.Tree cut in half in neighbour row over driveway pigeon poo
BBC (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... A neighbourly dispute over a tree between two drives turned into a "war" when one homeowner cut the intrusive evergreen in half.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-57598101
# International, Neighbours.How to grow vegetables and fruit trees while renting
Koren Helbig ABC (No paywall)Anna Matilda has lived in five different rental houses in the past decade — and sustained a thriving veggie patch at each one. She even has fruit trees that travel happily with her from home to home. Her secret? The Naarm (Melbourne) permaculture gardener grows almost all her food in pots.
https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/how-grow-vegetables-and-fruit-tr…
# Australia, Rent, Health.Apartment building owners and managers urge plans for dealing with COVID-19
Sue William Domain (No paywall)Apartment buildings have the capacity to be super-spreaders of COVID-19 “like vertical cruise ships”, but the state government has completely ignored the potentially catastrophic dangers, those in the sector claim. With one of Sydney’s biggest apartment towers now in lockdown after a resident tested positive to the highly infectious Delta variant, angry apartment owners and professional managers have accused the authorities of negligence. “We’ve got shared airconditioning systems, shared lifts, shared common areas like lobbies, stairways, lounges, gyms and pools, and yet when someone comes down with COVID, there are no clear guidelines or advice on what to do,” said Karen Stiles, the executive officer of the Owners Corporation Network.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/apartment-building-owners-and-man…
# NSW, Strata, Coronavirus COVID-19, Health.Rising property prices leaving thousands homeless while Government squanders windfall
(No paywall)The NSW Government is the beneficiary of an unexpected additional $1 billion in stamp duty from an out of control housing market but has failed to use this windfall to adequately invest in social housing to ensure people on low incomes across NSW do not end up homeless. While the Government boasts that housing prices in Sydney have surged 20% since the start of the pandemic homelessness services throughout NSW are struggling with increased demand due to rising rents for people on low incomes and low vacancy rates in many areas of NSW.
# NSW, Public and community housing, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, State Government, Tax.Warning that social housing residents set to be hit hardest by end of COVID support
Dominic Brady Inside Housing (Paywall)From the United Kingdom ... The economic divide between social housing tenants and the rest of the population is likely to increase when the government removes its economic support package, a report has warned.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/warning-that-social-ho…
# International, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19.Housing struggle adds to heartbreaking future for terminally ill brothers
Jodie Hamilton ABC (No paywall)When Robert Lovett and Kiera Howell sold their house in Port Lincoln this month after two and a half years on the market they should have been celebrating. Instead they are asking family and friends for support through a Go Fund Me page to help buy a house in Adelaide.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-24/lovett-family-housing-str…
# Australia, Health, Housing affordability, Housing market, Personal stories.There are solutions to the housing crisis, but none of them are Tory
Polly Toynbee The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... A country addicted to rising prices is pushing home ownership further from the young; but trying to correct it makes things worse. Help-to-buy for first-timers added 10% to prices. Together with the stamp duty holiday, Dorling finds the government is spending £25bn to prop up prices over the next three years. ... There are solutions, but none of them are Tory. Make renting fair and secure; tax property fairly; make developers sell land banks; and let councils build, so housing-benefit rents create assets.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/21/government…
# International, Public and community housing, Rent, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market, Tax.