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
If your landlord wants to increase your rent, here are your rights
Brendan Grigg and Hossein Esmael The Conversation (No paywall)Inflation is pushing up interest rates. Interest rates are pushing up mortgage costs. There’s talk of a rental supply crisis. This means there’s a good chance your landlord wants to increase your rent. So what are your rights as a renter? That depends on where you live, because residential tenancy laws are determined by state and territory governments. There are, however, many commonalities. Here’s a rundown. [Read on]
https://theconversation.com/if-your-landlord-wants-to-increase-y…
# Australia, Rent, Tenants Advice and Advocacy Services.Exclusion of ‘thousands’ of people from waitlists masks Queensland’s housing crisis, Greens say
Ben Smee The Guardian (No paywall)Queensland Greens MP Michael Berkman says the scale of the state’s housing crisis is being masked by government measures that have excluded potentially “thousands” of applicants from joining social housing waitlists. The Queensland parliament’s community support and services committee tabled a report on Friday afternoon, exploring housing models in Sydney and Melbourne. The committee’s chair, Labor MP Corrinne McMillan, said the challenges facing Sydney and Melbourne were similar to housing pressures in south-east Queensland. She called for a coordinated response from all levels of government, as well as the not-for-profit and private sector. ... In a dissenting report, Berkman said problems with housing in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane were driven by common factors, including the commodification of housing and policies that treat housing as a vehicle for wealth creation, rather than a human right. “These common features are essentially the backdrop for the housing crisis that each of the New South Wales, Victorian and Queensland governments is perpetuating, through their failure to implement meaningful rental reforms and the dramatic underinvestment in social housing,” Berkman said.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/09/exclusion…
# Australia, Public and community housing, Rent, Human rights, State Government.‘A necessity’: housing prices force more Australians into share homes in midlife
Cait Kelly The Guardian (No paywall)Mark Lanyon would prefer to live on his own. Instead, the 57-year-old shares a house in Berwick, in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, with three other guys aged between 19 and 40. Lanyon hasn’t shared a house since he was in his early 20s, but after getting a job in a factory near Dandenong six months ago, he had no choice. ... He is still searching every week for his own apartment but has found nothing close to his work under $300 a week. So now he pays $270 a week to share a four-bedroom house – with bills all included. ... The 2016 census showed that the share-house demographic was starting to skew older – with only half in their 20s and one in five more than 50. Generation rent is becoming generation share, says City Futures Research Centre’s Chris Martin. “They’re the equivalent of a generation previously who would have been getting into home ownership,” he said. “With the rising price of housing, there are more people renting and more people share housing and doing it longer into their lives.”
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/sep/10/a-necessi…
# Australia, Share houses.Common Ground Berlin
International Union of Tenants (No paywall)“Poor, but sexy” Berlin was famous for its cheap rents, but these days, the capital city is the second most expensive in Germany and among the 50 priciest in the world. Host Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson explores Berlin’s residential crisis brought on by a shortage of housing and inflation and what cities in Europe may offer a solution. (International Union of Tenants)
https://www.iut.nu/news-events/iut-patrticipates-in-common-groun…
# Audio International, Rent, Housing market.More On The Unoccupied Housing Question…
Martin North (No paywall)In this show we do a deeper dive into the ABS Census data series and examine the distribution and location of vacant property as defined by the census. We highlight the post codes with the highest counts and their distribution. We have mapped the results and added them to our Core Market Model. (Digital Finance Analytics)
https://digitalfinanceanalytics.com/blog/more-on-the-unoccupied-…
# Audio Australia, Housing market.Disasters cost households more than $1500 each, insurers warn
Clancy Yeates The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Natural disasters, including catastrophic flooding in NSW and Queensland, cost each Australian household an average of more than $1500 last financial year, insurers say, as the industry presses for more public investment in mitigation. This year’s flooding in northern NSW and Queensland was the second-most costly natural disaster in the country’s history, with almost $5.3 billion in insured losses, and new research commissioned by the Insurance Council of Australia (ICA) highlights the wider economic costs of extreme weather. The research, by think tank the McKell Institute, says the floods demonstrate how extreme weather is not only economically damaging to communities directly hit by disasters, but it can also affect many more people indirectly, such as through inflation.
https://www.smh.com.au/business/banking-and-finance/disasters-co…
# Australia, Housing market.Heat pumps can cut your energy costs by up to 90%. It’s not magic, just a smart use of the laws of physics
Alan Pears The Conversation (No paywall)Heat pumps are becoming all the rage around a world that has to slash carbon emissions rapidly while cutting energy costs. In buildings, they replace space heating and water heating – and provide cooling as a bonus. A heat pump extracts heat from outside, concentrates it (using an electric compressor) to raise the temperature, and pumps the heat to where it is needed. Indeed, millions of Australian homes already have heat pumps in the form of refrigerators and reverse-cycle air conditioners bought for cooling. They can heat as well, and save a lot of money compared with other forms of heating!
https://theconversation.com/heat-pumps-can-cut-your-energy-costs…
# Australia, Utilities water energy internet.Will 7-star housing really cost more? It depends, but you can keep costs down in a few simple ways
Trivess Moore and Nicola Willand The Conversation (No paywall)The required energy-efficiency rating of new housing in Australia will increase from 6 to 7 stars from October next year. Some claim this will greatly increase housing costs. But is this true? ... House size also affects construction and running costs. Star ratings express the energy demand per square metre, so a big 7-star home will cost more to heat and cool than a smaller 7-star home. Australian homes are among the largest in the world. New home buyers should think about the number and size of their rooms and corridors if they wish to keep costs low. Other basic and low-cost things you can do include adding more insulation (ceiling, floors, walls) and external shading. Windows are also important and the cost of high-performing double-glazed windows will fall as they become the norm. Also, read Isaac Nowrooz's article entitled: 'Energy efficiency requirements for new homes will rise in October next year, but building a 7-star home doesn't have to break the bank' on the ABC at: [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-07/act-building-seven-star-energy-efficient-homes-cost/101411910].
https://theconversation.com/will-7-star-housing-really-cost-more…
# Australia, Utilities water energy internet, Climate change, Housing market, Minimum habitability standards.