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
Empty rental listings plummet across the capitals except for Sydney and Melbourne
Tawar Razaghi Domain (Paywall)Tenants in most capital cities will be hard pressed to get a good deal right now with the number of empty properties having plummeted across the country – except for the two biggest cities, new data shows.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/tenants-hard-pressed-to-shop-arou…
# Australia, Rent, Housing market.Calls for refugees released from Brisbane hotel detention to be given emergency housing
The Guardian (No paywall)The Queensland government has been urged to provide emergency housing for 25 medevac detainees released by federal authorities in Brisbane after years in immigration detention. The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre says 25 people brought to Australia for medical treatment under now-repealed medical evacuation laws have been released into the community.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/mar/01/calls-for…
# Australia, Homelessness, Human rights.View from The Hill: royal commission confronts Morrison government with call for aged care tax levy
Michelle Grattan The Conversation (No paywall)The Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has recommended a levy to help fund aged care on a sustainable basis, and given the federal government two radically different options for running a reformed system. Releasing the multi-volume report on Monday, Prime Minister Scott Morrison played down the prospect of the government adopting the levy proposal, which would go against its mantra of not raising tax.
https://theconversation.com/view-from-the-hill-royal-commission-…
# Australia, Federal Government, Older people, Tax.The house loses, so sad but could housing win? (Fat chance)
Mike Brown The Fifth Estate (No paywall)It is sometimes said the Roman Empire did not collapse but morphed into the Roman Catholic Church. Likewise, it’s often claimed the Rum Rebellion never really ended but mutated into Sydney’s vigorous ecology of financial services and property development.
https://www.thefifthestate.com.au/innovation/residential-2/the-h…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Housing market.Eviction orders being issued despite UK government Covid pledge
Robert Booth The Guardian (No paywall)Eviction orders are being issued to tenants who have run up rent arrears because of the pandemic despite a promise by the housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, that “no renter who has lost income due to coronavirus will be forced out of their home”. Twenty members of the London Renters Union are among those facing the first court proceedings after the government quietly changed its eviction ban last month to allow landlords to throw out tenants who had fallen into arrears as a result of Covid.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/feb/28/eviction-orders-…
# Hot topic International, Eviction, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19.The utility of new data in understanding housing insecurity
Maria B Yanotti and others AHURI (No paywall)This study investigated the potential of using the Department of Social Services DOMINO (Data Over Multiple Individual Occurrences) dataset as a fine-grained, within-year data resource for housing research, and in particular explores the capacity of the DOMINO dataset to yield new insights into patterns of CRA (Commonwealth Rent Assistance). The results from this project aim to showcase DOMINO as a potentially rich resource of information offering policy makers and researchers a more nuanced appreciation of a potential housing tenure risk facing some of our most vulnerable households and individuals.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/WhctKJWQhltqFWSSrk…
# Research alert Australia, Rent, Federal Government, Housing market, Welfare.Economic struggle in Queensland worst for women, young adults, self-employed and renters since COVID, survey shows
Emilie Gramenz ABC (No paywall)Women, young adults, the self-employed and renters were among the groups experiencing the most financial pain from the COVID pandemic late last year, an analysis from Queensland's peak body for the social services says. Queensland Council of Social Service (QCOSS) chief executive Aimee McVeigh said "it may feel like it's business as usual for many of us in the community, but there are many people who are continuing to suffer the impacts".
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-02/qcoss-economic-struggle-c…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent, Coronavirus COVID-19, Women, Young people.Families in desperate need of housing in Newcastle
ABC (No paywall)A local homeless support service in Newcastle, which typically acts as a service for men, says it's experiencing a notable increase in families who are needing help. The ABC's Dan Cox and Jenny Marchant spoke to Karen Soper, the manager of Matthew Talbot Homeless Service in Newcastle, who says the current rental market is making it difficult for families to find housing.
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/newcastle/programs/breakfast/karen-…
# Video NSW, Rent, Families, Homelessness.