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
Mortgage stress: More than 130,000 households in NSW and Victoria on the brink of crisis, CHOICE warns
Sue Williams Domain (No paywall)More than 130,000 households in NSW and Victoria are on the brink of financial crisis as a result of mortgage stress, a shocking new report from consumer group CHOICE has revealed. As more people grow desperate to get into the rising property market and take on bigger mortgages, financial counsellors across the country admit they can barely keep up with their caseloads. And it’s now putting more pressure on the federal government’s plan to scrap responsible lending laws.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/mortgage-stress-more-than-130000-…
# Australia, Home ownership, Housing affordability, Housing market.The lesson for Australia out of Victoria’s property tax hikes: two out of three ain’t bad
Brendan Coates The Conversation (No paywall)Victorian treasurer Tim Pallas’s three-pronged strategy to raise an extra A$2.7 billion in property taxes over the next four years is a case of two out of three ain’t bad.
https://theconversation.com/the-lesson-for-australia-out-of-vict…
# Australia, Housing market, State Government, Tax.Housing affordability: Essential workers forced to move hours from their jobs as rents and house prices boom
Melissa Heagney Domain (No paywall)Essential workers in Sydney and Melbourne are being forced to move far from where they work to afford to rent or buy a home, new research shows. Moderate-income workers such as nurses and teachers are struggling to afford housing and are moving away to avoid being in housing stress, defined as spending more than a third of their wage on housing-related costs. Check the media report at: [https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2021/05/27/key-workers-pushed-out-of-sydney-and-melbourne-by-high-housing-c.html]. You will find the full report at: [https://www.ahuri.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0026/67607/AHURI-Final-Report-355-Housing-key-workers-scoping-challenges-aspirations-and-policy-responses.pdf]
https://www.domain.com.au/news/housing-affordability-essential-w…
# Research alert Australia, Rent, Affordable housing, Housing market, Planning and development.Disabled woman given eviction notice as sister was reputational risk, royal commission told
Josh Dye The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The chief executive of a disability service provider that tried to evict a client says the action was taken because the client’s sister – who made several complaints – risked damaging the organisation’s reputation, the disability royal commission has heard. Sunnyfield Disability Services chief executive Caroline Cuddihy fronted the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability in Sydney on Wednesday after two days of testimony from family members of Sunnyfield clients.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/disabled-woman-given-eviction-no…
# NSW, Eviction, Disability.Why Noosa can't dump 'junk' houseboats enjoying million-dollar views for free
Jacqui Street, Amy Sheehan, Sheridan Stewart, and Tessa Mapstone ABC (No paywall)The Noosa community is fuming as hundreds of boat owners exploit a loophole in Queensland marine laws and anchor "old junk" houseboats in front of premium waterfront real estate. ... [But] Some Noosa residents are reluctant to demand the vessels be moved on or scrapped, concerned that Queenslanders were living on the water amid a dire shortage of rental properties. They include boat owner Haykey Kaariainen, who was moored in the river waiting for new sails before heading north.
"I'm technically homeless," he said. "Either my van or my boat is my home."
Country councils sell up public land for houses to tackle crisis
Benjamin Preiss The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Regional and rural councils will take out loans for their own social housing projects and are selling off public land to make way for property developments in response to soaring house prices and rents in regional Victoria.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/regional-councils-in-ne…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Affordable housing, Housing market, Local Government.How a town Tony Abbott described as having the worst housing in Australia is changing the game
Julie Power The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Housing in the four town camps was overcrowded, the water was contaminated and toilets and plumbing were failing. When former prime minister Tony Abbott visited Borroloola in 2018, he said the housing was “The worst I’ve seen anywhere in remote Australia”. ... [Today] Welcome to Indi Kindi, an outdoor walking-learning early years program that travels from the bush to the river and local library. It’s led and taught by local Aboriginal people - and now a review of the Moriarty Foundation’s program has found it has bridged the gap in early childhood education by reaching 80 per cent of Indigenous preschool-aged children in Borroloola and nearby Robinson River on the Gulf of Carpentaria.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-a-town-tony-abbott-described…
# Australia, Race and ethnicity.Housing, home ownership and the governance of ageing
Emma R Power (No paywall)'Active ageing’ has become core to ageing policy internationally. This paper argues that housing, and specifically home purchase, is fundamental to the governance of active ageing in liberal welfare states such as Australia, the UK, the US and Canada. Specifically, the paper expands understanding of how neoliberally inflected active ageing agendas are advanced in conjunction with housing consumption, and builds new knowledge of the governance of asset-based welfare, the investor subject, and housing marginality, showing how these practices and identities are governed temporally through ideas about what it means to age well. Arguments are advanced through analysis of Australian government ageing and age-connected housing strategies in the 20 years to 2015. These strategies construct three key connections between housing and ageing. First, housing is framed as a base (or location) for active ageing, with secure, appropriate and affordable housing depicted as enabling participation. Second, home ownership is positioned as an individual responsibility. In this framing home ownership becomes a ‘ choice’ and means through which individuals can demonstrate responsibility by self-insuring against the fiscal risks of older age. Third, home ownership is connected to the activation of ideal ageing identities by enabling home owners as productive agers (the home as a form of income) and active consumers (home as a resource to fund prudential and age-defying consumption in older age). Significantly, in framing home ownership as an individual responsibility and choice the importance of structural factors shaping housing access are downplayed. This is a question of key geographical significance, foregrounding an interlinked agenda of not just how, but where, ageing should take place. (The Geographical Journal)
https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/geoj.12…
# Research alert Australia, Home ownership, Housing market, Human rights, Older people.