Adam Bandt signals new rent freeze push and criticises ‘tax cuts for billionaires’ as Labor aims to get ‘help to buy’ scheme through parliament
New year, new housing fight.
The Labor government may have started the year keen to talk cost-of-living relief and housing solutions, but the Greens have entered 2024 vowing to push the Albanese government to make actual change.
Continue reading...In latest move by University of California, Berkeley, law enforcement agencies arrested protesters and erected barrier
In a midnight operation, hundreds of police officers descended on People’s Park in Berkeley, California, to clear out the activists and unhoused campers occupying the area, to make way for the construction of a housing complex for students.
By dawn, the park that was once the centre of the 1960s antiwar and counterculture movement was walled off with shipping containers and surrounded by police.
Continue reading...Price trends are unlikely to be straightforward in 2024, even if the RBA’s next move is a rate reduction
Australia’s “rollercoaster” real estate market faces fresh peaks and troughs in 2024 as the prospect of falling interest rates contend with a recent slowdown in price increases.
Renters, meanwhile, are experiencing smaller increases in payments but the share of income going to rent remains at near-record levels with little relief in sight.
Continue reading...There are 121,327 in short-term housing, while 261,189 homes are empty long-term, say Lib Dems
England has more than twice as many long-term empty homes this Christmas as there are children living in temporary accommodation, the Liberal Democrats have said, calling this a stark indication of a “broken” housing market.
The numbers of families without a permanent home and in short-term housing, whether hotels and B&Bs or temporary rental properties, has hit a record high this year, with the latest statistics showing it now affects 121,327 children, according to data collated by the House of Commons library.
Continue reading...The prime minister has been facing questions on his government’s performance from senior MPs on the Commons liaison committee
Social care leaders felt “blindsided” by recently announced changes to visa rules banning care workers from bringing their families to the UK and have “grave concerns” it could drive people from the sector, the Commons health committee heard this morning. PA Media has filed this from the hearing.
The head of Care England, which represents social care providers across the country, criticised a lack of consultation with the sector, saying it left them “particularly concerned, annoyed and irritated”.
Prof Martin Green, its chief executive, told the committee the system is currently already “creaking at the edges” due to a lack of funding, and spoke of the “chronic workforce shortage” it faces.
Today’s guidance does not go far enough. During the many months we have been waiting for its publication, it has become increasingly clear that non-statutory guidance will provide insufficient protection and clarity, and that a change in the law of the land is required.
That is why I am today asking the government to back my private member’s bill which would change the law in this area to ensure children are fully protected.
Continue reading...Experts say lack of affordable housing in state is the main cause, worsened by expiration of pandemic programs that added shelter
California continues to lead the nation in homelessness, with US data showing the state has the highest rate of unhoused people living outside in a worsening humanitarian crisis.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud) released its Annual Homeless Assessment Report (Ahar) on Friday, providing a “point in time” snapshot from January 2023. On a single day, 653,104 people experiencing homelessness were counted across the US, the highest number since the count began in 2007. The estimates are considered to be undercounts.
Continue reading...Housing secretary aims to bring end to delays, as weakening of housing targets is confirmed
Michael Gove will threaten to take action against councils that miss deadlines to submit their housing plans in a speech on Tuesday designed to highlight the government’s commitment to build new homes across England.
The housing secretary will say he will “call out” local authorities that fail to publish their future development plans with a threat to intervene if necessary.
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Education review due
Education minister Jason Clare spoke to ABC News Breakfast just earlier about the much-anticipated review into Australia’s education system, released today.
You talk about entrenched disadvantage in our schools, this report tells us we’ve got one of the most segregated school systems in the OECD, not by the colour of your skin but the size of your parents’ pay packet. Children are more likely to fall behind at school if they’re from a poor family and from the bush, but if they’re at a school where a lot of people are experiencing disadvantage it’s even harder to catch up. There’s a number of things we need to do to turn that around.
Continue reading...Fees for foreign investors who leave properties vacant will double and taxes will triple for those who buy existing houses
Foreign investors in Australia will face higher fees and steeper penalties for buying existing homes and leaving them empty as the government aims to address housing affordability.
The federal government on Sunday announced new rules tripling taxes for foreigners who buy existing houses in Australia and a doubling in fees for those who leave dwellings vacant.
Continue reading...Research by centre-right thinktank says gap between the mainstream and poorest in society is widening
Covid lockdowns had a “catastrophic effect” on the UK’s social fabric and the most disadvantaged are no better off now than at the time of the financial crash, a new report claims.
The country is in danger of sliding back into the divisions of the Victorian era, marked by a widening gap between the mainstream and the poorest in society, according to an inquiry by the centre-right thinktank the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ).
Continue reading...Former Victorian premier gives first interview after resignation, saying ‘the haters hate and the rest vote Labor’. Follow the day’s news live
James Ashby to stand for One Nation in Queensland seat
James Ashby, the chief of staff to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, will stand for the party in the seat of Keppel at next year’s Queensland state election, AAP reports.
The Nationals are dead in Queensland’s parliament while the Liberals are lurching further left in their attempts to secure inner-Brisbane seats.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Minns government to place every aspect of housing ‘under the microscope’ as it confronts rental crisis
Vacant property taxes, levies and annual caps will be considered when the New South Wales government reviews regulation of short-term rentals including Airbnbs over the next six months.
The housing minister, Rose Jackson, who will lead the review, hoped to find ways to move some holiday rentals and unoccupied properties on to the longer-term rental market as the Minns government confronts the state’s chronic housing crisis.
Continue reading...Government push to clear asylum backlog is not giving people granted refugee status enough time to find new home, say councils
Tens of thousands of refugees are at risk of sleeping rough this Christmas after a Home Office drive to hit Rishi Sunak’s asylum case target, the umbrella body for local councils has said.
The Local Government Association said councils across England and Wales were facing a “perfect storm” as the government worked to clear 92,327 asylum cases by the end of the year.
Continue reading...Legislation to expand taxes on vacant Victorian homes and undeveloped land set to pass parliament
A deal to strengthen taxes on empty homes has been struck between the Victorian government and the Greens.
An upper house vote on changes to Victoria’s vacant residential land tax was put on ice earlier this month when the Greens and the Coalition refused to back the legislation.
Continue reading...New law would restore sweeping powers to the Industrial Relations Commission, including giving it the ability to act like a court
The New South Wales government has been accused of imposing a “de facto wages cap by stealth” as it seeks to rush through industrial relations legislation during parliament’s final sitting week of the year.
Labor’s plan would restore sweeping powers to the Industrial Relations Commission, including the ability to act like a court, which the former Coalition government removed in 2011.
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Hostage release essential if truce to last, Paterson says
Rewinding to Liberal MP James Paterson’s appearance on RN Breakfast this morning, wheN he said more needs to be done to free the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza.
We don’t know how many of them are still alive, and their continued release would be essential for any continuing ceasefire because otherwise Israel continues to have a legitimate military objective.
Continue reading...The 7.5% drop from the April 2022 peak has been recovered, but some cities are faring better than others, CoreLogic analysts say
Australian home prices are back at record levels, recovering all of the 7.5% dip from their previous peak in April 2022, according to the data group CoreLogic.
As of Wednesday, Corelogic’s home value index had climbed 8.1% higher than the recent nadir reached at the end of January this year, defying five additional interest rate rises by the Reserve Bank since then.
Continue reading...From building more homes to giving private renters a legal right to buy after longer tenancies
Demand far outstrips supply in private rented housing. More housing of any tenure should reduce excess demand, and with it rents. It could also increase competition among landlords, meaning higher standards, and restore the possibility that young renters could eventually afford to buy.
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‘A ceasefire is where we need to get to,’ Zoe Daniel says
Asked by RN Breakfast host Patricia Karvelas if she supports calls for a ceasefire, Zoe Daniel says:
If you call for a ceasefire, you’re letting down the Jewish community, if you don’t you’re allowing death and destruction to happen in Gaza.
At the end of the day, if I say to you right now, yes, I support ceasefire, that will make zero difference to what is happening in in Gaza.
I’m a former foreign correspondent. I know the logistics of this, of course, a ceasefire is where we need to get to, but you have a terrorist organisation in the middle of this. If there’s just a ceasefire, and there’s no capacity there to try to dismantle Hamas, does that allow Hamas to regroup? What does that actually lead to? That said, I’ve said to you before, very clearly, and I still stick to the position that the Israeli government has to adhere to international law and the rules of war, and I think, in some ways, has not been.
Continue reading...ONS says average price dropped 0.1% year on year in September, with those in London decreasing 1.1%
The average price of a home in the UK dropped by 0.1% in the year to September, official figures show – the first annual fall for more than a decade.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) figures, which are based on completed sales, have shown annual price inflation slowing since July 2022, when the headline rate stood at 13.8%.
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