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
Australian property: Delivering Walkmans in a smartphone world
Shane Wright The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Our tax system, our monetary policy settings, our fiscal settings and even our television programs all drive us to sink money into real estate rather than something that might be riskier but could deliver huge, long-term gains. [Read on]
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-property-deli…
# Australia, Housing market, Tax.‘Who knows what the inside is like?’ The Australians buying houses they have never seen
Calla Wahlquist The Guardian (No paywall)Erin Lyall has spent the past five weeks walking the streets of Sunbury via Google Street View, looking at houses. It’s not how she imagined buying her first home. But with Melbourne spending nine of the past 15 weeks in lockdown, and the clock ticking on her financial approval, Lyall decided not to wait. ... On Tuesday the 35-year-old and her partner made an offer on a house they had seen only through photos and videos, conditional on the property passing a building and pest inspection. It was refused, in favour of an offer with no building inspection requirement. Probably a sign of a narrow escape, Lyall says, but not enough to put her off doing it all again if the right home comes up.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/11/who-knows…
# Australia, Coronavirus COVID-19, Home ownership, Housing market.Social housing residents protest 'overpolicing' after alcohol confiscated, packages searched
Eden Gillespie SBS (No paywall)Residents of the Common Ground Towers in Sydney protested 'overpolicing' on Saturday after The Feed revealed this week that officers were searching packages and confiscating alcohol under the direction of NSW Health. Residents in 104 homes in the social housing towers have been living under a hard lockdown for 10 days, following the detection of four cases of COVID-19 in the building last Thursday. The Common Grounds Resident Action Group said they had organised the protests on Thursday and Saturday to call for an end to 'overpolicing', as well as a rent refund for their time in lockdown. The building is run by Mission Australia, with most residents having experienced long-term homelessness.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/social-housing-residents-protest-ove…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19.Death on our streets
Giovanni Torre (No paywall)At least eight Noongar women have died homeless in Perth this winter, including six on the streets, sparking renewed calls for action to address the homelessness crisis. In 2020, 56 homeless people died on the streets, 28 per cent of them Indigenous. Another homeless man was found dead in the Perth CBD last week. There are more than 1000 people sleeping rough on the streets of Perth each night, with 40 per cent Indigenous. (National Indigenous Times)
# Australia, Public and community housing, Homelessness, Race and ethnicity.Housing sector has lost ‘empathy’, says tenant body leader
Lucie Heath Inside Housing (Paywall)Jenny Osbourne, chief executive at Tpas (Tenant Participation Advisory Service), England, also told the Housing 2021 conference in Manchester today that the sector employed “some of the wrong people with the wrong values” over the past decade. She was speaking during a panel discussion about the new consumer regulation arm of the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), which is being introduced following the Social Housing White Paper and will see the regulator given more power to intervene on disrepair issues.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/housing-sector-has-lost-emp…
# International, Public and community housing, Repairs.New housing model could help three-quarters of homeless people into jobs
Tim Clark Inside Housing (Paywall)A study by De Montfort University found that the new model, called F2W, could help 53,000 rough sleepers into work and potentially save £601m in government homelessness funding.
The scheme was created by Elmbridge-based charity Rentstart and sponsored by housing and social justice charity Commonweal Housing. The study unveiled the results of a five-year pilot project which aimed to break the cycle of homelessness for dozens of individuals in Elmbridge, Surrey. The model provided supported housing, a matched deposit saving scheme and wrap-around employment support to people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness.
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/news/news/new-housing-model-coul…
# International, Public and community housing, Homelessness.Renters, landlords in limbo after COVID crashes dispute tribunal
Tammy Mills The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Thousands of Victorian renters and landlords are in limbo and unable to get a tribunal hearing to sort out disputes, including over bonds, due to disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic. Organisations that represent both renters and real estate agents say the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal is in immediate need of more funding and staff to address the delays, with the tribunal wrestling a mammoth task to move its antiquated system online. ... Though urgent cases involving critical repairs, family violence, extreme hardship, evictions and substantial rent arrears are prioritised, Tenants Victoria and the Real Estate Institute say disputes over bonds and compensation – of which there’s at least 10,000 in the system – take months to be dealt with, or in many cases, are not given a hearing date at all.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/renters-landlords-in-li…
# Australia, Bond, Tribunal NCAT, State Government.Life on the public housing waitlist: ‘A never-ending hell’
Josephine Franks (No paywall)There are many nights when Teressa Obrien huddles under a pile of blankets with her cat and cries herself to sleep. It’s been five years since the 57-year-old first put her name on the social housing register. During lockdown, her damp one-bed Richmond flat became a “prison”. She was constantly breathing in the smell of mould, unable to open the sealed windows to let in fresh air. There’s no heater, and with holes rotted through the windowsills and high ceilings, no point in getting one. Instead she relies on the electric blanket her daughter bought her. ... She has no idea when she might get placed. Her priority rating is A17, with A20 the highest. Her doctors have written supporting letters about her health conditions – she has fibromyalgia and stress-induced cardiomyopathy – but to “no avail”. “It just seems like a never-ending hell,” she said. The latest figures show the public housing waitlist hit a new record high of 24,474 in June, about three times what it was three years ago.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/126261307/life-on-the-public-ho…
# International, Public and community housing.