“Toronto passes controversail rule forcing developers to build affordable homes”

Well, it happened: Toronto will finally be moving forward with a long-discussed Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy designed to make living in the city more affordable.

This afternoon, city councillors voted overwhelmingly to approve the implementation of guidelines that will force developers to build affordable rental and ownership units within certain residential developments in portions of the city starting in 2022.

This long-discussed planning tool aimed at improving housing affordability in one of the most expensive cities on the continent took a leap forward in late October when the city’s Planning and Housing Committee voted to approve a staff report that advanced the policy.

Number of Australians with mental health issues needing homelessness help doubled in a decade

Better access to housing and income support is needed to address an alarming increase in homelessness among people experiencing mental ill-health says Homelessness Australia as World Homelessness Day and World Mental Health Day coincide on 10 October.

In 2019-20, 88,338 people with mental health issues sought homelessness assistance across Australia, almost double the 44,732 Australians needing assistance in 2011-12*. More recent monthly data shows a further 6% increase between June 2020 and June 2021**.

Homelessness Australia Chair Jenny Smith says growing homelessness among people struggling with their mental health highlights gaps in the safety net, as well as inadequate support for people with mental ill-health.

“If you’re struggling and unable to work it is basically impossible to afford rent on the inadequate JobSeeker payment, and people who need it can’t get into social housing,” Smith says.

The Week in Housing: Sunak puts housing under the radar

This news is produced by the UK based Inside Housing publication.

This week, the Inside Housing news team’s workload has been understandably dominated by the Budget and Spending Review.

Chancellor Rishi Sunak delivered his Budget October 28th 2021.

The fiscal doubleheader given by the chancellor on Wednesday set out his post-pandemic economic plan for the country.

In truth, it was a quiet one for the housing sector, with many of the announcements either recycled or trailed earlier in the week.

This included an announcement of an £11.5bn affordable housing funding settlement, which was announced last year;
a £2bn cladding tax, which was first mooted by former housing secretary Robert Jenrick in February this year; and
a £1.8bn brownfield development fund that was released on Monday.

Now it’s official: Brexit will damage the economy long into the future

We’re used to hearing apocalyptic descriptions of the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the UK economy: “the largest fall in economic output since 1709”, was the Office for National Statistics’ verdict eight months ago.

Yet the Office for Budget Responsibility, in its report on Wednesday’s budget, estimates that the long-term impact of Brexit will be more than twice as great as Covid.

It thinks that Brexit will reduce UK productivity, and hence GDP per capita, by 4%, while the impact of Covid on GDP will only be 2%, with a slightly smaller impact on GDP per capita.

No model includes everything. The OBR’s is no exception.

It hasn’t accounted for the damage done to education during the pandemic, especially for poorer kids.

Here, the government’s failure to fund a serious catch-up programme could leave permanent scars – both economic and social.

And, on the other side, a more liberal migration system towards non-European migrants could, in principle, offset some of the damage of Brexit.

But so far, it looks as if, from an economic perspective, Covid is for Christmas, while Brexit is for life.

Housing Legislation Amendment Bill 2021

The Housing Legislation Amendment Bill 2021 has been introduced in the Queensland Parliament to progress Stage 1 of Queensland’s rental law reform.

The first stage reforms aim to strike the right balance between renters and rental property owner interests for all parties to have:

– more certainty about their tenancy arrangements by encouraging greater transparency and accountability about intentions and decision making
– confidence their rental property is safe, secure and functional by prescribing Minimum Housing Standards
– certainty about how renters experiencing domestic and family violence can manage their tenancy arrangements to improve their safety without bearing the costs of the violence used against them
– frameworks to support negotiations about renting with pets and encourage more pet-friendly rental accommodation in Queensland.

The proposed changes to Queensland’s rental laws have been informed by community consultation with over 150,000 responses received from consultation processes held in 2018 and 2019.

The COVID-19 response for residential tenancies also tested key elements of Stage 1 reform options in 2020 and 2021.

Improving real life impacts for liveable and accessible higher density homes

Australia’s Sustainable Built Environment National Research Centre (SBEnrc) develops projects informed by industry partner needs, secures national funding, project manages the collaborative research and oversees research into practice initiatives. Core Members of SBEnrc include BGC Australia, Government of Western Australia, Queensland Government, Curtin University, Griffith University and RMIT University.
This research would not have been possible without the valuable support of our core industry, government and research partners.

The research explores the broader thinking is needed for the liveability and accessibility of our urban housing precincts to be more successful in terms of providing safe and fulfilling environments, especially for the most vulnerable in our community.
A whole-system thinking approach is essential to provide more resilient environments in the event of currently unforeseen disruptions.

Associate Professor Sacha Reid and her team have finalised a Liveability Framework for Medium to High-density Social and Affordable Housing, to be used to develop project and precinct-based, value-focused standards and targets to drive adoption of better outcomes and promote community acceptance of delivering whole-of-life solutions.

Some of the features with real-life impacts highlighted from two case studies undertaken to test the framework include:
• Car parking – dedicated, accessible parking is needed: for example, for visitors with a disability; for the drop-off and collection of residents with a disability; for support services that may be providing daily care for residents; for OZHarvest deliveries; and for maintenance workers
• Wi-fi access – needs to be considered as an essential service to ensure social connection and enable working/schooling-from-home options
• Night-time safety in higher density precincts – needs to be better considered through planning and designing for improved community surveillance and physical design, and to ensure physical safety and emotional wellbeing
• Site selection – needs to maximise opportunities for liveable and accessible design outcomes, and while clever design can sometimes resolve these issues, every opportunity for successful living needs to be maximised.
Other elements are considered in this important and timely research.

Paris shows how to make public housing greener and more habitable at the same time

When U.S. Representative Jamaal Bowman visited his childhood home in Harlem’s East River Houses last winter, he was struck by a piece of graffiti at the entrance.
The tag read, simply, “Help.”

For Bowman, it was a fitting testament to the state of New York City’s public housing, which aims to provide “safe, affordable housing” too low- and moderate-income New Yorkers.

In recent years, however, the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA, has become a poster child of environmental injustice and government neglect.

The agency faces a $40 billion backlog of lead paint, mould, heat and gas outages, and myriad other problems to fix.

This has translated into a public health crisis for its half-million residents — more than the population of Atlanta, Georgia — which, like so many other symptoms of inequality, has only deepened during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sustainability in the ongoing running costs of housing remains largely aspirational in many parts of the world.

But such a transformation is well underway in other cities around the world — perhaps none more than Paris, which has been retrofitting thousands of public housing units per year for more than a decade.
The city’s ambitious retrofit campaign may offer some insights into how housing authorities could make essential repairs while also reducing building emissions, and respecting tenants’ rights during tricky renovations.