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
San Antonio piloting Ikea's trauma-informed housing design
Madalyn Mendoza Axios (No paywall)Towne Twin Village now features an Ikea-designed home built with trauma recovery in mind. Why it matters: This marks Ikea U.S.'s first trauma-informed housing project, making San Antonio a leader in a healing-first approach to housing. Ikea is currently working with partners in Washington, D.C., and Memphis, Tennessee, to implement similar trauma-informed designs there. The latest: Ikea completed and donated the small home to Towne Twin Village and is working with the supportive housing community to select a resident, who is expected to move in soon. The home incorporates trauma-informed design principles that prioritize healing and safety along with insights from resident focus groups.
https://www.axios.com/local/san-antonio/2024/12/05/ikea-trauma-d…
# Hot topic International, .Evictions skyrocket as rising rents squeeze low-income Americans
Kaisha Young & John Yang PBS News (No paywall)Eviction filing rates are soaring after the pandemic’s renter protection programs expired. One reason is the rising rents and a shortage of affordable housing for those with the lowest incomes. Diane Yentel, CEO and president of the National Low Income Housing Coalition advocacy group, joins John Yang to discuss the impact.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/evictions-skyrocket-as-rising-…
# Video International, Eviction.Proposed class-action lawsuit accuses companies of price-fixing rents in Canada
Angela Hennessy CBC (No paywall)A proposed class-action lawsuit alleges more than a dozen landlords and property managers have conspired to artificially inflate rents across Canada. The suit claims landlords and property managers did it by using software called YieldStar. The move comes after the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a similar lawsuit in August against RealPage Inc., the Texas-based company that created YieldStar. RealPage says it has filed a motion to dismiss the DOJ's lawsuit alleging antitrust violations. The Canadian suit alleges the software essentially allows landlords and property managers to share proprietary data on their rental pricing — information that wouldn't normally be shared with competitors — and that this could potentially allow companies to fix prices.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/rent-prices-canada-proposed-cla…
# Hot topic International, .Welcome to the Human Doom Loop
Diana Lind Slate (No paywall)For a decade, my therapy appointments required a 30-minute train ride to a mid-rise medical office building in suburban Philadelphia, where I reclined on a black leather couch, grabbing the occasional Kleenex. But since 2020, I’ve simply closed my web browser (article drafts, credit card bills, LinkedIn feed), angled a 1080p camera so my therapist can’t see baskets of laundry and my kids’ stuffies, and spilled my guts. I sometimes wish I could still visit my therapist in person and even miss those train rides where I’d take stock of my week, but I have no choice but to log on: My therapist, like so many other professionals, has given up going into the office.
https://slate.com/business/2024/11/remote-work-life-loneliness-i…
# Hot topic International, .Why rents are still higher in much of the U.S. than before the pandemic
Kaisha Young, Marconja Zor & John Yang PBS News (No paywall)Rents today are well above what they were before the pandemic. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans’ second-highest personal finance concern this election year is the cost of housing, behind only inflation. John Yang speaks with Diane Yentel, CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, about what’s keeping rents high.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/why-rents-are-still-higher-in-…
# Video International, Rent.Renter blacklisted after leaving gift for landlord
Orana Durney-Benson Domain (No paywall)An Australian renter claims an act of kindness was repaid by their name being placed on a national blacklist. The tenant left a bookshelf in their furnished apartment “as a gift for a future tenant”. Most of the furniture that the landlord provided had been in poor working order, including a broken lamp, drawers filled with junk, and a microwave that “smoked when used for months”. Given that most of the furniture was broken, the renter believed the functional bookshelf they left in the property would be received positively. Instead, their name was added to the national blacklist run by TICA, a private company that collects renters’ data.
https://www.domain.com.au/news/renter-blacklisted-after-leaving-…
# Must read Australia, .Meet the forever renters: ‘Nobody wants to be in share housing when they’re in their late 70s’
Daisy Dumas The Guardian (No paywall)Too old to be renting” is how Thomas, a 65-year-old Queenslander sums it up. He and his partner had been saving to buy a home before rent rises ate into much of their savings. “Home ownership opportunities have vanished,” he says. A country that once considered home ownership a pillar of adult achievement is becoming a land of older renters. The managing director of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Dr Michael Fotheringham, expects the Australian home ownership rate of 66% to fall to 63% by 2026, while research for Housing for the Aged Action Group found that the number of private renters aged over 55 increased by 73% between 2011 and 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/dec/07/australia…
# Hot topic Australia, Share houses.Ben moved 28km for cheaper housing. There he found a hidden cost
Tawar Razaghi The Sydney Morning Herald (No paywall)Ben Kreunen has moved further away from Melbourne over the years to maintain affordable rent as the rental crisis has escalated. “I lived in share houses to start out with, and I lived closer to the city. It was easier with multiple wages. But as time went on, the closer areas started becoming more expensive, and I gradually moved further out,” the 59-year-old tech support worker said. New research lays bare the scale of hidden costs that households are paying as a trade-off for cheaper rents or sticker prices, which are unaccounted for in standard housing affordability measurements.
https://www.smh.com.au/property/news/ben-moved-28km-for-cheaper-…
# Must read, TUNSW in the media Australia, .