Without any response from the state government to the TUQ’s request for specific, time-limited funding to represent tenants’ interests in the current tenancy law review, today marks the last day there is funding for any independent tenant advocate in the state. That means, after today, not one cent of the $34M of the interest generated on tenants’ bonds last year will be applied to any independent tenant advice service or for any tenant advocate to raise tenants’ interests in the current legislative review, which will continue next year.
This is not a sustainable outcome and will only serve to undermine people’s confident in the outcomes of the legislative review and impartiality of the Residential Tenancies Authority.
Tenant advocates have lobbied for tenant/landlord regualtory systems since the mid 1980s when there was no accessible process for a tenant to seek the return of a bond regardless of how the property was left. Getting a bond back was often difficult, sometimes impossible until the introduction of the then Rental Bond Act 1989 regulating the process and limited access to independent tenant advice.
Tenant advocates further lobbied and supported the broader systems we now have – central bond collection and an authority to administer the laws, complementing a network of independent, highly-trained, regionally-accessible and tenant specific services, with the Residential Tenancies Act 1994 and subsequent Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2003. Tenants and tenant advocates have been at the forefront of these changes.
It is therefore both ironic and a travesty that the state government now sees the independent services for tenants as superfluous. Not only do tenants effectively pay for the entire system by foregoing any interest generated on their bonds, in 2012 services direct specifically to tenants costs only 12-15% of the total bond interest. With this small amount of the interest, tenants receive high quality advice and a level of response tailored to their needs and situation. Additionally the work advocates do with tenants allows them to provide expert information and advice to policy makers and the community about tenancy laws and rental housing.
How will tenant interests get heard into the future if the government breaks down the system?
2013 is now only hours away. We hope next year brings you challenges and successes that build on this year’s. Save Tenant Services will be back soon after New Year full of energy and enthusiasm and a refocus on restoring justice and fairness to tenant services and the use of tenant bond interests. We look forward to working with you.