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
Peter Khalil warns of Covid's unequal impact after Blacktown apartment lockdown
Finn McHugh (No paywall)As restrictions thaw across most of Australia, NSW is settling in for a grim winter. The state confirmed another 172 cases on Tuesday, its biggest single-day increase since the outbreak began, as the virus continued to seep through Sydney's strict lockdown. And authorities are facing a balancing act: containing the highly-infectious Delta strain, while avoiding slapping draconian measures on already marginalised groups. The task is complicated by the fact the most disadvantaged are the most likely to work multiple jobs or in frontline services, and live in high-density settings where the virus flourishes. Labor MP Peter Khalil, who grew up in Melbourne social housing, warned they had already borne the brunt of the pandemic. (The Canberra Times)
https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/7358761/delta-strain-has-…
# Hot topic Australia, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19.Juanita Nielsen's suspected murder brought Arthur King back to Kings Cross after his terrifying ordeal
Michael Dulaney ABC (No paywall)Arthur [King] had organised a group of about 50 neighbours to oppose a developer's plans to knock down their homes on Victoria Street in Kings Cross. The fight to save their street was costing some powerful and dangerous people a lot of money. It would ultimately be linked with the suspected murder of Arthur's neighbour, high-profile journalist Juanita Nielsen. Some of Arthur's neighbours entered his apartment and found him missing, the bedroom in disarray and a desk chair thrown on the bed. (ABC Radio National)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-31/juanita-nielsen-murder-ca…
# History NSW, Campaigns and law reform, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Another roaring 20s? We need to do better than that
Dan Davies The Guardian (No paywall)The relationship between house prices and interest rates is almost insultingly trivial when you get it. If the tenant in a house pays £20,000 a year in rent, and the house costs £1m, then from the landlord’s point of view, the house is like a savings bond paying 2%. While the interest rate on savings is 0.5%, the landlord is happy – in fact, he might buy more million-pound houses if he can. But if rates go up by even 2-3%, the house becomes a worse deal than the bond. As a consequence, landlords would probably sell their houses, driving the price down until some sort of stable relationship is established. Instead, house prices have soared to 30% above their peak before the 2008 financial crisis. What does this mean for politics? In my view, everything. It means that the housing wealth of the boomer generation is to a very great extent leprechaun’s gold. They can’t sell it at anywhere near the current price – there aren’t enough buyers – and even a small normalisation of the economic cycle would cause it to disappear. Their interest in the profitability of houses as an asset class makes sense when set against the spiralling cost of care in later life. But this fear cannot justify the harm it causes to generation rent.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jul/28/roaring-20…
# International, Housing market, Young people.Innovative responses to urban transportation: current practice in Australian cities
Jago Dodson, Carey Curtis, David Ashmore, Ian Woodcock and Stephen Kovacs AHURI (No paywall)A new report released today by researchers from RMIT University, Curtin University and Swinburne University explores how Australian urban transport programs and policies are responding to changes in transport technology, travel patterns, environmental imperatives and spatial development dynamics and identifies potential policy directions for Australia’s cities and policy arrangements.
https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?pli=1#inbox/WhctKKWxZJlhvDKpjN…
# Research alert Australia, Planning and development.Blacktown apartment block resident speaks out after building plunged into isolation
Eden Gillespie SBS (No paywall)Along with 100-or so residents, Michelle Hinwood will be locked up in her Western Sydney unit after six cases of COVID-19 were detected in the building. She told The Feed the heavy police presence on Monday night was “a little bit scary”.
https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-feed/blacktown-apartment-block-r…
# NSW, Public and community housing, Coronavirus COVID-19."You can’t do Housing First to people.” How the second evaluation of the Housing First regional pilots shows the importance of choice and co-production
Alex Smith (No paywall)From the United Kingdom ... [The report]shows the pilots have supported an incredible 904 people to date. There is often an assumption with Housing First that housing is the most important element, and that people offered a Housing First approach will be immediately responsive. However, we see through the report the importance that relationships play and of staff being ‘trustworthy, non-judgemental and empathetic’ towards people who have felt previously let down by services. (Homeless Link)
https://www.homeless.org.uk/connect/blogs/2021/jul/29/%E2%80%9Cy…
# International, Health, Homelessness.Fixing the housing crisis will mean treating shelter as a right—not a commodity
David Moscrop (No paywall)The housing affordability crisis is not just a crisis of home ownership, affordable rent, and access to permanent shelter; it’s also a crisis of community and well-being ... The housing crisis is most acute where we find people who cannot secure a safe, permanent place to call home. It intersects with other crises, including our failed and outdated drug policies and inadequate health system. But it is also part of a broader housing affordability crisis that reaches across the country, where once more we find a privileged subset of the population who have won the lottery with homes, and another, more privileged, group that have made a fortune investing in real estate—still the greatest guarantor of generational wealth. (Canadian Dimension)
https://canadiandimension.com/articles/view/fixing-the-housing-c…
# International, Rent, Affordable housing, Homelessness, Housing market, Landlords and agents.Brisbane running out of land for new homes, with less than 3 years’ supply
Felicity Caldwell The Sydney Morning Herald (Paywall)Brisbane will run out of available land to build new homes in less than three years – and Noosa has just one year – as a housing crisis grips the state. The startling projection was revealed via documents released as part of Queensland budget estimates hearings ...
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/queensland/brisbane-running-out-…
# Australia, Housing market, Planning and development, State Government.