The NSW government was broadly lauded when it scrapped no-grounds evictions but a recent change could make things tougher for tenants.
- Senior Research Fellow, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW
Progress on housing policy has been patchy, in part because there’s no national plan guiding efforts to address homelessness. A bill currently in front of parliament could fix this.
The tiny remote community of Santa Teresa spent seven years fighting for compensation for poor public housing. Now that the High Court has ruled in their favour, what does it mean for other renters?
The strategy’s core mission should be to ensure everyone in Australia has adequate housing. That requires 950,000 social and affordable rental dwellings to be built by 2041, dwarfing current targets.
It’s often claimed that reforming tenancy laws to better protect tenants will drive landlords out of the market, leading to fewer rental properties. A new study finds no evidence to support the claim.
Finding stable housing is one of the biggest challenges facing prison leavers. Access to public housing has been found to flatten the curve on rates of recidivism.
More people than expected needed help, and the states have found stable housing for less than a third of rough sleepers who were put up in hotels. A hands-off federal government simply isn’t helping.
Some rent assistance is paid to households who don’t much need it. Others who do need it miss out.
Representatives of tenants and agents agree that leaving individuals to try to sort out rent reductions has created a mess. It calls for government to step in to look after both renters and landlords.
Housing is our first line of defence against coronavirus, so leaving someone homeless increases the risk for everyone. Australia should follow other countries in imposing a moratorium on evictions.
In 2016, a Victorian court decided an Airbnb arrangement was a lease. ‘Guests’ could be protected by tenancy law, including against eviction. And in this case the host was evicted for subletting.
Having quality housing matters. What’s standing in the way of ensuring every Australian has housing that meets basic comfort and health standards? And how can we overcome these problems?
If we recognised social housing as infrastructure as essential as transport links, schools and hospitals, not properly investing in it could become unthinkable.
Short-term letting via digital platforms benefits some in the market at the expense of others. Closer regulation might be needed in Melbourne and Sydney, where a permissive approach prevails.
One problem with Airbnb is that it isn’t transparent about how many properties are truly ‘shared’ and how many are just part of a letting business. Regulators need to know that to manage the impacts.
A new report shows how the private rental sector is changing.
There is a risk that affordable housing policy may be colonised by for-profit interests if Australia imports the wrong rental housing ideas from overseas.
Social housing can certainly have heritage significance. Over more than 100 years, it has been shaped by contemporary architectural and political ideas, sometimes in an exemplary way.
Almost nowhere in our capital cities can low-income households – and those on average incomes in Sydney – afford the median rent. Mapping rental vulnerability finds it in regional areas too.
The budget is pushing for a much-needed reboot of the social housing sector. What it isn’t offering is extra funding to renew and expand run-down housing stocks.
Although the federal-state agreement does it inadequately and lacks transparency, an enduring program of federal funding for operational expenses is essential to sustain the social housing system.
Any attempt to improve security for tenants should not deprive them, or their landlords, of the flexibility that many also want. The key problem is landlords’ ability to give notice without a reason.
We are hearing dire warnings from property interests fighting against changes to negative gearing. But what if Labor’s proposed changes actually support demand for the flood of new properties?
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