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
Real estate agents in Australia using apps that leave millions of lease documents at risk, digital researcher says
Josh Taylor The Guardian (No paywall)Australian platforms used by real estate agents to upload documentation for renters and landlords are leaving people’s personal information exposed in hyperlinks accessible online. An analysis of seven rent platforms provided to Guardian Australia by a researcher, who wished to remain anonymous, revealed millions of leasing documents could be accessed by threat actors. Real estate agents manage sensitive tenant and landlord data on a daily basis, including lease agreements, identification documents, payslips and personal references.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/02/real-esta…
# Australia, Starting a tenancy.Australian government spends more on tax breaks for landlords than social housing, homelessness and rent assistance combined
Patrick Commins and Cait Kelly The Guardian (Soft Paywall)The Australian government spends billions of dollars more on tax breaks for property investors than on social housing, homelessness and rent assistance combined, according to research by the Australian Council of Social Service (Acoss). The analysis comes as new data from the Productivity Commission reveals the share of homes dedicated to social housing has dropped to a record low 3.6%, from 5.7% in the 1990s.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/29/australia…
# Australia, Public and community housing.Youth homelessness is 'significant' in the ACT and a rent support disparity could be a major factor
Niki Burnside ABC (No paywall)Nick was just 16 when he first became homeless. It was the beginning of more than four years spent bouncing between different types of accommodation as he struggled to find long-term housing. "I went between two crisis refuges, and then I was at medium-term accommodation for almost three years," he said. "And, during that time, we worked on getting onto the priority housing list and I eventually got where I am now in March of 2024." It was not a simple process for Nick to find somewhere to call home.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-29/act-youth-homelessness-si…
# Australia, Public and community housing.Anywhere but Melbourne?
Peter Mares Inside Story (No paywall)From the big end of town, the perspective is grim. Global investment in Victoria’s property sector halved in three years, down from $10 billion to $5 billion. The Property Council is quick to blame the state government’s “punitive” tax settings. Real estate agents, meanwhile, warn that higher land taxes and tighter tenancy laws have driven investors to sell thousands of properties rather than let them. When Victoria’s new opposition leader Jess Wilson set about meeting business types, she says she heard the phrase anywhere but Melbourne three times in three days. One of Wilson’s first pledges was to make housing more affordable by addressing “all the taxes that sit on property.”
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.Let the Pinnacle case be your inspiration to start a tenants union
Virginia K. Smith The New York Groove (No paywall)Something we’ve always hoped we’d have an opportunity to say: It’s a bad time to be a bad landlord. Following his inauguration ceremony and block party on Jan. 1, Mayor Zohran Mamdani used his first day in office to visit a Flatbush building owned by the Pinnacle Group, a particularly notorious landlord in a city that’s full of them. The mayor also used his first day in office to sign an executive order with plans to revive the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants, saying, "If your landlord does not responsibly steward your home, city government will step in.” But years before the issue caught the eye of an incoming mayor, the strongest (and only) advocates for Pinnacle buildings were the tenants themselves.
# Must read International, Eviction, Rent.‘Counterintuitive and dangerous’: advocates warn Trump administration policies will increase homelessness
Isabeau Doucet The Guardian (No paywall)When Shawn Pleasants first heard that the federal government was tearing up almost two decades of homelessness policy, it sent chills up his spine. Pleasants, 58, was brought right back to the moment he lost his car and was forced to start living on Los Angeles’s streets. “That feeling of, you could never be safe – there’s no more future,” he said. He’d spend a decade living on the streets of Koreatown, until the day he and his husband received a section 8 voucher from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/19/homelessness-tru…
# Must read, Hot topic International, .Is this Labour party for rich investors or hard-working leaseholders? We must make that clear today
Angela Rayner The Guardian (No paywall)At cabinet last Tuesday the prime minister reportedly made a powerful case for a government that serves the interests of those struggling to get by. He is right. The cost of living emergency is the issue of our time. It is a crisis not months, but years in the making. For more than two decades, living standards have been crushed and there is an increasing sense of a country where people cannot get on, of a system stacked against them. In the face of this deep-set disillusionment, Labour in government has been at its best when challenging the status quo. By standing firm in the face of established interests who have had it their own way for decades – that’s exactly what the landmark Employment Rights Act and Renters’ Rights Act have done, delivering new protections for millions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/20/labour-par…
# International, .Labour should ‘buy the supply’ of housing from landlords
Siân Berry MP and Benjamin McKechnie The Guardian (No paywall)My heart obviously breaks for distressed buy-to-let landlords (Are UK buy-to-let landlords dying out – and should we care?, 5 January) but, if some landlords are feeling the pinch, a policy I have long pestered the government about is, by chance, tailor-made to help them. We need to replenish our decimated social housing stock, and part of the answer is what I call “buy the supply”. For years, I have called for funding to help councils increase the number of homes they can buy into their housing supply. Whether that is buying back right to buy homes, or snapping up suitable houses that are put on the market, this can achieve immediate, construction-risk-free social homes near existing schools, parks and health services.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jan/09/labour-should-bu…
# International, .