- by Maka Ciftci
- The Guardian
- Issue #2124
Photo: Ashley Brown – flickr.com (CC BY-NC 2.0)
Some have welcomed Premier Jacinta Allan’s recent reforms aimed at making the Victorian rental market fairer, which include a ban on no-fault evictions, and lease break fees capped at four weeks.
According to progressive think tank Per Capita, tenants in Australia “enjoy far less security in their homes than do renters in comparable countries”.
Per Capita argues that Australia has “low levels of protection for tenants from eviction” by international standards.
Dr Kate Raynor, Director of the Centre for Equitable Housing approved of the reforms, saying that they not only increase housing security for renters, but also “address some of the fear and power imbalance that stops renters asking for basic repairs in their homes.”
On the down side, Labor is pressing ahead with plans to demolish public housing towers and replace them with new, and also mixed – not public – housing. Premier Allan described people who oppose Victorian Labor’s plans as “a small number of people … backed by the Greens political party, who have demonstrated that they don’t want particularly vulnerable Victorians to have the dignity of a new modern home.”
The Residents and Housing Union (RAHU) responded: “If Allan’s government truly cared about the ‘dignity’ of vulnerable people in rentals, they would not be ploughing ahead with plans to completely destroy and privatise one of this state’s greatest assets,” and argued that Allan should instead be doing more to protect people in precarious situations from eviction or massive rental increases when requesting basic repairs.
