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.
Our main email newsletter, Tenant News is sent once every two months. You can subscribe or update your subscription preferences for any of our email newsletters here.
See notes about the Digest and a list of other contributors here. Many thanks to those contributors for sharing links with us.
We love sharing the news and hope you find it informative! We're very happy to deliver it for free, but if you find it valuable, can you help cover the extra costs incurred by making a donation?
Archive
The housing crisis leaving children crawling in poison
Angus Thomson The Sydney Morning Herald (Soft Paywall)An acute shortage of affordable housing in the regional city of Broken Hill is forcing Indigenous families into unlivable rentals riddled with mining contamination, exposing children to blood lead levels double the rate of the general population. Health workers and community leaders have urged Premier Chris Minns to invest in stable social housing for Indigenous families and a revamped program to reduce lead contamination in existing homes, after new statistics revealed two-thirds of Aboriginal children aged between one and five have blood lead levels higher than the national guideline.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-housing-crisis-leaving-child…
# Hot topic Australia, .Engineer who helped build Melbourne’s public housing towers condemns plan to demolish ‘icons’
Benita Kolovos The Guardian (No paywall)An engineer who helped build Melbourne’s public housing towers in the 1960s has condemned the Victorian government’s plan to demolish them, saying it is expensive, unnecessary and environmentally irresponsible. Gerry Noonan, who worked on most of the city’s 44 towers, told a Victorian parliamentary inquiry into their redevelopment they should be refurbished and upgraded instead – citing the financial cost and carbon impact of demolition and rebuilding.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/06/victoria-…
# Australia, Public and community housing.Higher interest rates smashed landlord profits, but negative gearing means few sold up
Geraden Cann ABC (No paywall)Eddie Dilleen is a 33-year-old who claims to own 150 properties. His confidence in property investing cannot be overstated. "To me it's definitely a no-lose game, it's the best way to create wealth in Australia," he says. Mr Dilleen runs his own buyers agency, and his holdings make him one of 166 mega landlords identified by the ATO as owning 20 or more rentals in their own name during the 2022–23 tax year.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-09/interest-rates-smashed-me…
# Must read Australia, .Nine’s property underquoting exposé is a work of immaculate timing
Glenn Dyer Crikey (No paywall)In property, an old adage is “location, location, location!” But don’t discount the importance of timing. Five days after Domain shareholders approved the sale of the company to US property listings group CoStar, the Nine papers ran big on Saturday, Sunday and today with a series of stories about systematic underquoting in the Sydney and Melbourne property markets.
https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/08/11/nine-property-underquoting-…
# Hot topic Australia, Rent.Australia is now a 'home owners' welfare state', and income inequality is worse than we think
Gareth Hutchens and Rhiana Whitson ABC (No paywall)Australia's income inequality is much worse than we think because official statistics ignore the income that home owners derive from their properties, leading economists say. New research finds Australia's extremely favourable tax treatment of owner-occupied housing is fuelling the problem, encouraging Australians to plough money into housing at the expense of everything else — leaving those without housing even further behind.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-13/australia-is-a-homeowners…
# Australia, .How a 'snowballing' $76 blockchain token trend could become the first rung on the property ladder for Australian renters
Dr Ehsan Noroozinejad Sky News (No paywall)Trying to save a 20 per cent deposit now feels like running on a treadmill that keeps speeding up. A recent analysis shows the average renter would need more than eight years to scrape one together, and that’s if rents stop jumping tomorrow. Many young Australians have quietly decided the old dream is broken. But a different path is opening on their phones: buy a sliver of a house for the price of a night out, collect rent the next morning, repeat.
https://www.skynews.com.au/insights-and-analysis/how-a-snowballi…
# Hot topic Australia, .Squatters removed from flood-damaged buyback homes in NSW Northern Rivers
David Kirkpatrick ABC (No paywall)A two-year stand-off between squatters occupying flood buyback homes and the NSW government has ended with sheriffs seizing multiple properties. The homes were purchased by the state government in response to the devastating 2022 floods. The squatters were given 20 minutes to remove their essential belongings from 10 homes in Lismore and Mullumbimby, which were then boarded up. Many of the squatters appeared to have anticipated the arrival of the NSW Sheriff's Office and had already left.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-06/lismore-squatters-removed…
# Hot topic NSW, Disasters, Eviction.What to expect when attending the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT).
Zuzia Buszewicz Tenants' Union of NSW (No paywall)These days, renting in NSW could be described as a series of unavoidable compromises. Low availability, high demand and ever-growing rental prices make for a tough market to navigate, even for those earning $100,000 a year or more1, and all the more so for renters on lower incomes. Consequently, you would be hard pressed to find a renter who’s happy with every aspect of their home. If the place is big enough, it’s likely either far from amenities or in need of long overdue repairs (or both). If the property is conveniently located, it’s often far more costly than the renter can actually afford.
https://www.tenants.org.au/blog/what-expect-when-attending-nsw-c…
# Must read, Hot topic NSW, Bond, Eviction, Rent, Tribunal NCAT.