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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
Fresh calls for HomeBuilder extension as industry reports record growth
EUan Black The New Daily (No paywall)The Morrison government is under pressure from Labor to extend the final HomeBuilder deadline after new data showed the construction industry is growing at its fastest pace since before the global financial crisis.
https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2021/04/07/homebuild…
# Australia, Federal Government, Housing market.Trade and product shortages amid homebuilder grant-induced building boom 'a perfect storm', industry experts say
Rachel McGhee ABC (No paywall)Australia's building sector is bearing the brunt of a "perfect storm" of events, with near-record new home approvals putting intense pressure on supply chains and sparking construction delays.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-07/qld-tradie-shortage-amid-…
# Australia, Federal Government, Housing market.What tenancy protections are available for renters after the moratorium ends?
(No paywall)As Australia transitions out of the COVID-19 emergency period and moratoriums come to an end, several measures remain to support tenants and landlords. We’ve rounded up the key changes and financial support measures for each state and territory to help you navigate this period. (rent.com.au)
# Must read Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19.Tenants in flood-affected areas face rent hikes amid shortage
Nila Sweeney (Paywall)The floods of last month across NSW may have receded in the affected areas, but the pain is just starting for a lot of renters. An analysis conducted by Suburbstrend.com found the NSW rental markets that were most impacted were already tightening dramatically before the flooding, as strong demand from tenants moving away from the CBD outpaced available rentals. ... “Many renters in these regions have already been under immense pressure before the floods as a result of the great city exodus,” said Kent Lardner, director of Suburbtrends.com. “So even a small number of people displaced by floods will now be actively looking for rental homes, which will tip many of these markets into a crisis point, especially for low income families.” ... Among the areas that were hardest hit include Port Stephens, Port Macquarie, Maitland, Taree and Lake Macquarie, where vacancies have fallen to about 0.2 per cent. The current shortage of available rentals in the region has prompted landlords and property managers to become more picky when choosing their tenants ... (Australian Financial Review)
https://www.afr.com/property/residential/tenants-in-flood-affect…
# Hot topic NSW, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Housing market.How do we fix the UK housing crisis?
Hilary Osborne, Pamela Duncan and Lydia McMullan The Guardian (No paywall)Lindsay Judge, research director at the Resolution Foundation thinktank, ... describes the private rental sector as the “‘wild west’ of Britain’s housing stock” and the Resolution Foundation says it should be professionalised. The thinktank suggests policy should be “moving to indefinite tenancies, and creating a tenants’ loans system to tackle the mounting arrears crisis without causing mass evictions”. ... “The economic fallout from the pandemic has left millions of families worried about paying rent,” says Darren Baxter, housing policy and partnerships manager at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation thinktank. “The government should immediately introduce a targeted package of grants to support renters in arrears, ensuring that they can stay in their homes.” [Read the full article]
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/apr/01/how-do-we-fix-t…
# International, Eviction, Public and community housing, Rent, Affordable housing, Home ownership, Housing market, Tax.Rental stress and evictions
Elle Marsh (Paywall)As moratoriums that barred landlords from evicting tenants during the pandemic come to an end across the country, housing experts fear a homelessness crisis is looming. (The Saturday Paper)
https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2021/04/03/ren…
# Hot topic Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, State Government.How Housing Activists Took On Philadelphia and Won In a city with thousands of vacant homes, families are still homeless. Jennifer Bennetch decided to do something about it.
Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein (No paywall)From the United States ... In late June, in a video on the news site Unicorn Riot, the activist Jennifer Bennetch was standing around, waiting to announce an occupation. The video showed her in front of the headquarters for the Philadelphia Housing Authority, wearing a fanny pack and a colorful print hijab, bouncing anxiously on her heels, then glancing over her shoulder as if to make sure the coast was clear. Yet once she began, she spoke calmly and deliberately, proceeding almost without pause. The housing authority, she explained, owns hundreds of row houses in North Philadelphia. Over the past decade, some of the houses had been boarded up and some sold off to developers. She had a list. A number of the boarded-up houses, she revealed, weren’t empty: Families had been living in them since March. The video caused a sensation. [Read on] (The New Republic)
https://newrepublic.com/article/161730/housing-activists-took-ph…
# International, Homelessness, Housing market, Squatting.Landlords waste no time issuing notices to vacate after eviction moratorium ends
Rachel Wells Domain (No paywall)Victorian tenancy support groups say landlords have wasted no time in trying to evict tenants from their homes, with some renters receiving notices to vacate only hours after the state’s moratorium on evictions ended on Sunday. Noel Lim, CEO of Anika Legal, which offered a free online legal service for Victorian renters, said the organisation started receiving requests for its new eviction support service on Monday. “The fact that we were contacted on day one, which was the first possible chance for landlords to provide a notice to vacate, suggests that we’re going to see a whole lot more inquiries once there has been a bit more time for landlords to prepare their paperwork,” Mr Lim said. “It is pretty clear that many landlords had been sitting and waiting for the ban to lift so they could evict their tenants.”
https://www.domain.com.au/news/landlords-waste-no-time-issuing-n…
# Hot topic Australia, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Landlords and agents.