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
Remote WA community buys prefab Chinese houses after decades in unfit homes
Alistair Bates and Charlie McLean ABC (No paywall)There are some nights Raylene Robinson would rather sleep under the open sky than in her government-sanctioned home. Mould creeps up the walls, floorboards warp at odd angles, and the tap won't stop running. "It's making me feel like I [should] go out bush and live for a while," the Martu elder says. Deep in the Western Desert, on the banks of an ephemeral salt lake, a remote housing crisis is leaving families to languish in overcrowded, crumbling, and improvised humpies. Bureaucratic deadlock and shifting government responsibility has seen 50 years pass without a new build.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-07/calls-for-housing-investm…
# Must read Australia, Aboriginal renters.Western Australia housing crisis feeding into remote teacher shortage
Ruby Littler ABC (No paywall)A shortage of available housing is deterring would-be teachers from studying and working in Western Australia's far north, sparking fears one crisis is directly fuelling another. Student teachers keen to work at schools in the state's Kimberley are struggling to find anywhere to live while undertaking their placements. And with teacher resignations rising and graduate numbers falling across the state over the past five years, the WA teachers' union says remote towns such as Broome will feel the heaviest impact.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-07/housing-crisis-leading-to…
# Australia, .Thousands of Victorians with disabilities face losing their homes
Grant McArthur and Kieran Rooney The Age (Paywall)Thousands of Victorians with profound disabilities face the prospect of eviction from their group homes and the loss of carers they have relied on for years due to a funding stand-off between private providers, the state and the federal government. Almost 60 Victorian supported independent living homes caring for the state’s most vulnerable residents have been closed in the past 2½ years, and the not-for-profit organisations appointed to take over the state’s disability accommodation sector eight years ago have confirmed they are now operating with only one month’s cashflow.
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/thousands-of-victori…
# Australia, Eviction.Apartment Vacancy and Rent Outlook H2 2025
CBRE (No paywall)CBRE’s Australian apartment report presents our forecasts across 53 precincts. Key points: CBRE expect median rents to grow by 24% between 2025-2030, across 53 precincts in Australian capital cities. By 2030, 92% of 2-bed apartments are forecast to have rents exceeding $700/week (33% exceeding $1000/week).
https://www.cbre.com.au/insights/reports/apartment-vacancy-and-r…
# Research alert Australia, Strata.Trump Wants to Institutionalize Unhoused People. History Shows That Doesn’t Work.
Robert Davis Invisible People (No paywall)Service providers and advocates warn that the Trump administration has created a dangerous new way for America to respond to homelessness. In late July, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” The order requires state and city governments to commit people living unsheltered with mental health or substance abuse challenges to “appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time.” It also asks the Attorney General to find ways to reverse federal or state law that prohibits the federal government from committing these individuals.
https://invisiblepeople.tv/trump-wants-to-institutionalize-unhou…
# History International, .Renters’ shelter costs by duration of tenancy
Samuel MacIsaac and David Wavrock Statistics Canada / StatCan (No paywall)Renters’ shelter costs can vary substantially by duration of tenancy. Renters who recently moved into their dwelling can pay substantially more than longstanding renters. This tenure-based discrepancy in rents paid can have important implications in terms of discouraging residential mobility and, by extension, Canadian labour mobility. Using data from the Census of Population and the National Household Survey, this study sheds light on trends in shelter cost differences by duration of tenancy from 1996 to 2021, and how this gap in rental costs between recent renters and longer-term renters varies across municipalities and neighbourhoods.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/36-28-0001/2025008/article/0…
# Research alert International, Rent.Should the UK bring back rent controls?
Richard Murphy Funding the Future (No paywall)Wealth and rents are the issues that I want to talk about in this video. This is the 13th in our series on wealth, and in that series, we've looked at the reasons why the wealthy in the UK have become wealthy. And one of those reasons is because they own a significant amount of the UK's land. The average person in the top 1% of wealth owners in the UK has total ownership of land worth more than £2 million out of their total wealth of more than £5 million.
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/09/01/wealth-series-13-…
# Audio, Video International, Rent.Council seizes control of landlord's properties
Victoria Cook BBC (No paywall)A council in south-west London has seized long-term control of a landlord's properties after they were not licensed correctly. Merton Council took control of the portfolio of 18 properties, rented as houses of multiple occupancy (HMO), because the owner "persistently failed to ensure they are safe and suitable for residents". The local authority will control the properties for five years, while the landlord, who has not been named, will remain responsible for paying the mortgages.
# International, .