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
Building more houses quickly is harder than it looks. Australia hasn’t done it in decades
Ehsan Gharaie and Ali Zolghadr The Conversation (No paywall)Thanks to HomeBuilder and the housing price boom, house building is experiencing its hottest year on the record. Over the space of a year the number of houses (not apartments) under construction has jumped from 56,060 in the June quarter 2020 to 88,445 in the June quarter 2021 — the biggest peak of all time. It would be entirely reasonable to expect the record number under construction to be converted to record completions. That’s the point of construction. But bizarrely, the same set of Bureau of Statistics figures show no such thing. Even after an enormous jump in construction, and all through previous jumps in construction, the number of houses completed each quarter has changed little.
https://theconversation.com/building-more-houses-quickly-is-hard…
# Australia, Housing market.Toowoomba property prices to explode by 15 % in three years
David Iliffe ABC (No paywall)It's official - Toowoomba's median house price has jumped 9 percent in the last 12 months. But a national report just released predicts a further rise of 15 percent by the middle of 2024. The report by BIS Oxford Economics attempts to map the next three years of property prices across the country. Toowoomba real estate agent of 36 years David Snow told the ABC's David Iliffe and Belinda Sanders the figures were backed up by what he's seeing on the ground. (On Breakfast)
https://www.abc.net.au/radio/southqld/programs/breakfast/toowoom…
# Audio Australia, Housing market.Report uncovers harassment and choking death at NT Regis Tiwi aged care home
Housnia Shams ABC (No paywall)[A] report by the federal government's Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission (ACQSC) found national aged care provider Regis Aged Care breached eight quality standards at its Regis Tiwi facility in Darwin's northern suburbs, including not meeting the personal and clinical care needs of residents. ... In one instance, a resident ... choked to death after being given food that wasn't in accordance with their prescribed diet.The report also states that [another] resident's wound was "infested with maggots" on several occasions over a four-month period.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-24/nt-regis-tiwi-aged-care-r…
# Australia, Health, Housing market, Older people.Turning 11 acres of a NSW ‘dumping site’ into a world-class farm
Harriet Alexander The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)The land had little going for it when Wollongong not-for-profit group Green Connect selected it as the site of their new urban farm. ... A decade later, it has become one of the largest urban permaculture farms in the world and attracted international attention, with Green Connect winning the 2021 Commonwealth Secretary-General’s Innovation for Sustainable Development Award. ... It has also extended employment opportunities to young people who face barriers to employment such as mental illness, drugs or violence at home or insecure living conditions. The farm arose from a gap in employment prospects for refugees living in Wollongong, which is one of the largest settlement areas for refugees in Australia. The refugees, who arrive mostly from Central Africa and the border region between Thailand and Myanmar, already had farming skills. But they could not get jobs. Green Connect stepped in with a project that would use their skills, provide employment and supply fresh fruit and vegetables to the community. ... “They work so beautifully together. There’s this magic where young people bring English language and Australian culture and share that with our refugee staff, and the refugee staff bring a very hard work ethic and stories of hardship that make young people sit up and think, ‘maybe my life is not so bad after all’.” ... In the last 12 months, the farm has sold 35,000 kilograms of food, provided seven permanent jobs and 30 casual jobs and run tours and workshops for more than 1900 individuals.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/wollongong-wasteland-wins-in…
# NSW, Gardens, yards, lawns, Work, employment, Young people.October 2021 News
Shelter NSW (No paywall)Check out the latest housing news from Shelter NSW ... "Any day when more vulnerable people get access to secure, affordable housing is a good day." This was our CEO John Engeler being quoted in an online news story last Saturday, as news broke of a substantial $183 million commitment from the NSW Government to social housing across NSW. And that was before an even bigger announcement a few days later about an additional $484 million being committed to domestic and family violence housing and services in NSW.
https://mailchi.mp/shelternsw/shelter-nsw-october-2021-ebulletin…
# NSW, Campaigns and law reform.‘I just want what everyone else has’: what homeless people told Jennifer Kavanagh about their lives
John Harris The Guardian (No paywall)From the United Kingdom, a book review from June of this year ... On a damp Tuesday lunchtime at the north end of Regent Street, George is working his beat as one of one of London’s Big Issue sellers. I have not come to interview him, but his experience is so relevant to what I will be talking about for the next two hours that I feel duty-bound to ask him about his life, and how things have been in the past 15 months. When he is not in the centre of the city, he tells me, he lives in a hostel for homeless people near Canary Wharf, five or six miles to the east. “Lockdown was hard,” he says, “’cos I couldn’t sell the magazine, and I needed to pay rent to the hostel. And the isolation was really difficult: a little room, and I had to pretty much stay in there, and only go out for, like, an hour a day. I went for weeks on end not speaking to anyone.” Does he have family? “No, no. Not in London. My parents are dead; my brother and sister are abroad. One in Canada, one in Australia. So it’s been isolating, you know?”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jun/09/i-just-want-what…
# International, Coronavirus COVID-19, Homelessness, Personal stories.Your home can harm your health — and you're more likely to be at risk if you rent
Stephen Smiley, Ange Lavoipierre and Scott Mitchell ABC (No paywall)As many as 1 million Australians live in housing that harms their health, according to Rebecca Bentley, who is the director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing, and it's renters who suffer the most. ... [Rebecca Bentley, Director of the Centre of Research Excellence in Healthy Housing] said some of the health-harming problems found in homes included damp and mould, which could affect up to a quarter of housing stock in Australia, and there were other things people might not even realise were harming their health. "We know that living in cold housing for a period of time has an effect on people's respiratory health, their mental health and cardiovascular disease, and we know that these are all major contributors to the burden of disease in Australia."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-22/renting-home-can-be-harm-…
# Australia, Rent, Health, Housing market, Mould.NSW takes aim at capital gains tax breaks for property investors in bid to help first-home buyers
Tom Lowrey ABC (No paywall)The New South Wales government has taken aim at controversial tax breaks for property investors, suggesting they are pushing first home buyers out of an increasingly competitive property market. In a submission to a federal inquiry on housing affordability, the state government is suggesting the federal government review the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount. It has also said the government should consider adopting something similar to an abandoned Labor policy to try and address the imbalance. It argued the discount — which provides a major tax break for those selling properties they have owned for 12 months or more — pushes first home buyers out to advantage investors.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-10-22/nsw-capital-gains-ax-chan…
# NSW, Home ownership, Housing market, Landlords and agents, Tax.