City Futures Blog

News and research in housing and urban policy, from Australia’s leading urban policy research centre.

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Entries Tagged as 'Law'

What impacts do social housing legal responses to crime and anti-social behaviour have on vulnerable families?

June 13th, 2019 · No Comments · Government, Housing, Law, Tenancy

By Chris Martin, City Futures Research Centre. This is an edited version of the Executive Summary of the report, ‘Social housing legal responses to crime and anti-social behaviour: impacts on vulnerable families‘, published by AHURI. Housing policy in Australia has enlarged the role of social landlords in relation to crime and non-criminal anti-social behaviour (‘misconduct’). […]

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Chilly house? Mouldy rooms? Here’s how to improve low-income renters’ access to decent housing

June 5th, 2019 · No Comments · Affordability, Construction, Housing, Housing conditions, Law, Tenancy, Wellbeing

Too many Australians struggle to get their housing maintained and problems fixed. Trevor Charles Graham/Shutterstock By Edgar Liu, Chris Martin and Hazel Easthope, City Futures Research Centre. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. People’s quality of life, their health and their comfort can suffer when living in […]

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Housing policy reset is overdue, and not only in Australia

March 15th, 2019 · No Comments · Affordability, Economy, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, International, Law, Productivity, Tenancy

Duncan Maclennan, University of Glasgow and Hal Pawson, UNSW. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Federal and state elections in coming weeks provide a timely moment for Australians to reflect on the increasingly obvious failure of governments to manage the triple crises of inflated property prices, […]

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Who wins and who loses when platforms like Airbnb disrupt housing? And how do you regulate it?

November 8th, 2018 · No Comments · Affordability, Airbnb, Cities, Government, Housing, Housing supply, International, Law, Marginal rental, Private rental, Sharing, Sydney

By Laura Crommelin, Chris Martin and Laurence Troy (City Futures Research Centre, UNSW Sydney) and Sharon Parkinson (Swinburne University of Technology). This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Short-term letting platforms like Airbnb are changing property owners’ and investors’ views and behaviour in the Sydney and Melbourne rental […]

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An open letter on rental housing reform

September 25th, 2018 · No Comments · Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing conditions, Law, Tenancy

The right of landlords to terminate a lease with no grounds is the most serious deficiency in residential tenancy laws in New South Wales. Shutterstock Following a review of the New South Wales Residential Tenancies Act 2010 in 2016 and extended consultations, the NSW government has introduced a number of reforms to parliament. Debate is […]

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Airbnb regulation needs to distinguish between sharing and plain old commercial letting

June 6th, 2018 · No Comments · Airbnb, Cities, Data, Housing, Housing supply, Law, Sharing, Sydney

Image: paul/Flickr, CC BY By Laura Crommelin, Chris Martin and Laurence Troy, City Futures Research Centre, UNSW. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. Airbnb and other short-term letting websites have been a hot topic of debate for some time. In New South Wales, it seems the state government is on […]

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What Australia can learn from overseas about the future of rental housing

January 24th, 2018 · No Comments · Demographics, Finance, Government, Housing, Housing conditions, International, Law, Private rental, Tenancy

Image: AAP/David Crosling By Chris Martin. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. When we talk about rental housing in Australia, we often make comparisons with renting overseas. Faced with insecure tenancies and unaffordable home ownership, we sometimes try to envisage European-style tenancies being imported here. And, over the past year, […]

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Federal Government’s affordable housing reforms need a social housing investment plan

November 13th, 2017 · No Comments · Finance, Government, Guest appearance, Housing, Housing supply, Law, Money

By Julie Lawson, Honorary Associate Professor, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University. City Futures Research Centre is collaborating with Dr Lawson on the AHURI Inquiry ‘Social Housing as Infrastructure‘. The Centre for Urban Research in its submission concerning the National Housing and Finance Investment Corporation to the Federal Treasury provides evidence to support an appropriately governed […]

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Harnessing Big Data in Challenging Urban Contexts

August 9th, 2017 · No Comments · Cities, Data, Guest appearance, Law, Migration, Sustainability, Transport

Harnessing big data in an urban context is the “grand challenge.” Image: AIG By Laura Bruce, Built Environment, UNSW Sydney. On July 21st 2017 academics and public sector representatives met to discuss the challenge of harnessing big data in the urban context in order to address the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The event was hosted […]

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Saving Sirius: why heritage protection should include social housing

July 28th, 2017 · No Comments · Government, Law, Sydney, urban renewal

By Chris Martin, UNSW. Originally published on The Conversation. Campaigners to save Sydney’s landmark Sirius building from demolition had a significant legal win this week. Last year, the then state heritage minister, Mark Speakman, refused to list the Brutalist block of public housing apartments on the New South Wales Heritage Register. Doing so would reduce the […]

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