Biden administration lacks authority to extend moratorium because supreme court said in June Congress would have to act
The White House said Monday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) was “unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium” and asked instead that states and local governments put in policies to keep renters in their homes.
Related: US states brace for ‘avalanche’ of evictions as federal moratorium ends
Continue reading...Public inquiry into June 2017 disaster hears that Robert Black failed to mention numerous risks and problems following review
The former boss of Grenfell Tower’s management body repeatedly failed to alert residents and councillors overseeing its work to serious fire safety issues and has admitted to “keeping the board in the dark”.
Robert Black, who was chief executive of the Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation (KCTMO) at the time of the fire, did not tell boards at the council and the arm’s-length management body about problems with smoke extractors at Grenfell, a deficiency notice issued by London fire brigade on the tower, or problems with fire doors at another block that suffered a fire.
Continue reading...As Pakistan’s supreme court backs bulldozing of homes blamed for floods, critics say government has no proper plans for residents
Maqsooda Bibi, 62, did not know the house she had lived in all her life would be demolished, forcing her whole family to become homeless. But on Monday, Pakistan’s supreme court backed the Sindh government in bulldozing her home and hundreds of others, legalising the eviction of thousands who live along narrow waterways – nullahs – that crisscross Karachi.
The verdict came as Bibi and hundreds of others held a protest outside the court. “We hoped that the court would ask the government not to make us homeless, but it did the opposite. Our children also protested on Sunday and urged the supreme court to stop demolition. It seems no one here cares for the future of the poor.”
Continue reading...While ban on evictions protected some people, domestic abuse and loss of temporary accommodation were common triggers for homelessness
At least 130,000 households in England were made homeless during the first year of the pandemic, despite the government’s ban on evictions, according to data sourced by the Observer. With the ban now over, fears are rising that a surge of evictions may be imminent. But the Observer’s figures show that even while the ban was in place, households were being forced from their homes.
“The ban didn’t stop tens of thousands from facing homelessness,” said Polly Neate, chief executive of Shelter. “During the pandemic, the most common triggers for homelessness were no longer being able to stay with friends or family, losing a private tenancy, and domestic abuse.”
Continue reading...Rising house prices and restrictions on overseas travel are leading to a surge in popularity for houseboats
Little more than six months ago, Paul and Anthony Smith-Storey were still living in a three-bedroom semi-detached house near St Helens in Merseyside. But now the couple – and their dog, Dexter – have traded it all in for a life afloat in a two-metre-wide narrowboat on Peak Forest Canal in Derbyshire.
“We took the equity out of the house, bought the boat and thought we’d enjoy it while we were still alive,” said Anthony, 48, an NHS sonographer. They are not the only ones.
Continue reading...Activists were shot and beaten at demonstration to stop property giant Bahria Town building on indigenous land they say was taken with force
Muhammad Anwar was not aware of any danger when he took the day off work to join his friends at a demonstration on a construction site of a powerful real estate company.
When Anwar, 35, reached the west bank of Langeji river, near Karachi, earlier this month, he saw the bulldozers levelling land next to Bahria Town, a luxury gated development.
Continue reading...The state’s Coalition has been forced further into minority after it lost its second MP to sexual assault allegations. Follow the latest updates
More cold days ahead for south-eastern Australia.
You will feel the chill if you live in southern #SA, #NSW and all of #Vic and #Tas, as cold fronts move through from the Southern Ocean, bringing a 3-day wintery blast of cold, wet and windy weather.
Latest forecasts & warnings: https://t.co/YRNaGYP9ci pic.twitter.com/yaqsY43HpF
The Australian Signals Directorate refuses to say who was behind an attack on parliament’s IT systems in March, despite confirming it knows who it was.
The parliamentary services department confirmed an outage of the system that manages mobile devices was caused by the department shutting the system to prevent an attempted intrusion into the parliamentary computer network.
Continue reading...Some blame new residents and second-home owners not keen on sight and sounds of ‘local’ vessels
The spot could hardly be more idyllic. A Cornish creek fringed by apple trees where boats bob at high tide and dogs and children frolic in the mud at low.
But there is trouble in the parish of Feock after a string of acts of vandalism aimed at those bobbing boats led to a wave of anger, fear and suspicion.
Continue reading...Landlords may have scored a pyrrhic victory, with suggestions activists could move to expropriate empty flats
The housing question is one of the central issues of our time, and events last week in Berlin underscored what’s at stake. In a much-anticipated ruling, Germany’s constitutional court in Karlsruhe ruled that Berlin’s Mietendeckel or rent cap was unconstitutional, and therefore null and void. The product of years of concerted organising by housing movements and leftwing parties in the city, the rent cap is wildly popular with Berlin’s tenants, who make up three-quarters of the city’s households. But it was hated by landlords, real-estate investors and members of Germany’s conservative political parties. The lawsuit against the cap was filed by 284 parliamentary members of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP).
Berlin’s rent cap was part of a new law passed by the city in January 2020. The cap prevented owners of flats built before 2014 charging more than what had been agreed in June 2019. It also stipulated that any rents that were 20% in excess of acceptable levels should be reduced, varying according to location and quality. Landlords who did not comply with the new law faced heavy fines. The policy was to be in place for five years. New-builds were exempt.
Continue reading...Covid failings, crackdown on protest, police discrimination and resumed arms trade with Saudi Arabia all listed in annual report
Amnesty International has published a stark rebuke of the UK government’s stance on human rights, saying that it is “speeding towards the cliff edge” in its policies on housing and immigration, and criticising its seeming determination to end the legal right for the public to challenge government decisions in court.
In its annual report on human rights around the world, Amnesty International says the UK’s increasingly hostile attitude towards upholding and preserving human rights legislation raises “serious concerns”.
Continue reading...Many readers say last week’s announcement will have little impact on their – or their children’s – ability to buy a house
Last week we asked Guardian readers about the government’s attempt to rein in New Zealand’s runaway house prices. We heard from investors and renters, first-home buyers and retirees. While some readers – including investors – were supportive, many felt the policy changes didn’t go far enough.
Some pointed out that beefed-up grants to first-home buyers would make little impact in markets such as Wellington and Auckland, with young people still despairing of ever getting a foot on the housing ladder. Many said that the effect on renters had been overlooked, arguing in favour of German-style rent control. Others said they were afraid for their children’s future, while some wrote that they feared they would never be able to afford children.
Continue reading...With prices soaring, many fear they will never be able to buy. Others will try anything as the crisis threatens to define a generation
On finding herself shut out of the property market, Nicole Thorburn looked for a side door.
At 29, Thorburn had been living with her parents for seven years to save for a deposit on her first home in Thames, a small town on the Coromandel Peninsula south-east of Auckland – but the pandemic has sent already buoyant prices skyrocketing.
Continue reading...The Pritzker prize, once reserved for flamboyant creators of icons, has gone to Lacaton & Vassal, whose rallying cry is: ‘Never demolish, never remove – always add, transform and reuse’
When Lacaton & Vassal were commissioned to redesign a public square in Bordeaux, their response was unusual. The French architects told the client to leave it alone. They thought the square was perfectly good as it was, and that public money would be better spent elsewhere.
“When you go to the doctor,” said Jean-Philippe Vassal, “they might tell you that you’re fine, that you don’t need any medicine. Architecture should be the same. If you take time to observe, and look very precisely, sometimes the answer is to do nothing.” In Bordeaux, the architects’ diagnosis was that the square just needed some new gravel.
Vassal and his partner, Anne Lacaton, have built a 30-year career on knowing how to intervene with the most economical of means, for which they have now been recognised with the Pritzker prize, architecture’s highest honour. In an age of demolishing public housing and replacing it with shiny new carbon-hungry developments in the name of “regeneration”, Lacaton & Vassal have worked tirelessly to expand and upgrade existing buildings with surgical precision, transforming the lives of thousands of people in the process.
Stephen Cottrell says the nation has learned to live with wrongs when it should be trying to change them
Britain needs to reset its compass in a political climate in which “we’ve learned to accommodate things that we know are wrong”, the archbishop of York has said.
Stephen Cottrell, who was enthroned in October, told the Observer: “Our compass has slipped; we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that things can’t change, that this is just the way the world is. Politics has, I think, shrunk. There’s a loss of vision about what the world could be like.”
Continue reading...Royals used secretive procedure to approve laws that gave special exemptions to Duchy of Cornwall
The royal family has used a secretive procedure to vet three parliamentary acts that have prevented residents on Prince Charles’ estate from buying their own homes for decades, the Guardian can reveal.
His £1bn Duchy of Cornwall estate was later given special exemptions in the acts that denied residents the legal right to buy their own homes outright.
Continue reading...Only 94,000 properties built in first nine months of 2020, well below the 300,000 a year promised
Covid-19 has knocked the government further off course from its housebuilding targets, a study has revealed, with only 94,000 new homes built during the first nine months of 2020.
The first wave of coronavirus led to the temporary closure of construction sites last spring, leaving output well below the 300,000 new homes a year which the Conservatives pledged in their manifesto, according to research by the Resolution Foundation thinktank.
Continue reading...Few places have seen such turbocharged luxury development as Nine Elms on the London riverside. So why are prices tumbling, investors melting away and promises turning to dust?
Every morning, when Nadeem Iqbal wakes up and walks into his living room, he has a view of a miraculous world first. A crisp oblong of crystal clear water now hangs in the air between two apartment buildings opposite his balcony, a liquid blue block suspended against the sky with the gravity-defying quality of a Magritte painting.
This is the Sky Pool, the latest addition to the luxury residential enclave of Embassy Gardens in Nine Elms, south-west London – one absurdist step beyond the private cinema, indoor pool, gym and rooftop lounge bar. It was dismissed as a “crackers” PR stunt when the plan was unveiled by Irish developer Ballymore in 2015, a fantastical aquarium of captive high net worth individuals for the rest of us to gawp at from far below. Surely it would never materialise. But last week the scaffolding was taken down to reveal a bright blue rectangle hovering against the leaden January skies, 10 storeys up in the air – just outside the 30-metre bomb blast seclusion zone around the new neighbouring US embassy.
Continue reading...Despite stay at home orders, vulnerable asylum seekers in Home Office accommodation say they were given as little as a day’s notice
Modern slavery survivors with young children were among refugees allegedly forced to move accommodation in London with as little as one day’s notice during coronavirus lockdowns this winter.
Women who are among the UK’s most vulnerable refugees and asylum seekers said they were given just 24 hours to pack before being moved from accommodation provided by the Home Office, often having to travel long distances across the capital, in late December and January.
Continue reading...Some thoughts on buying a house, white privilege and homewares for the apocalypse
What does it say about capitalism, John asks, that we have money and want to spend it but we can’t find anything worth buying? We’re on our way home from a furniture store, again. We almost bought something called a credenza, but then John opened the drawers and discovered that it wasn’t made to last.
I think there are limits, I say, to what mass production can produce.
Continue reading...Court found L&Q had misled black woman who was harassed by family and had to flee her home
A leading housing association has been condemned by a court for failing to support a tenant made homeless after a racist campaign by neighbours.
London & Quadrant (L&Q), which accommodates 250,000 people across London and the south-east, ignored a code of practice on protecting tenants from racial harassment and was guilty of defensiveness and insensitivity, according to a county court judgment issued last week.
Continue reading...