Victorian tenant advocates seek changes to the law following the sad death of three International students.  Reprinted from the Age, January 24.  Read it from the website here.

Packed share houses pose risk for international students

International students are at grave risk of house fires with overcrowding and  a lack of understanding about smoke alarms among major problems, housing groups  say.

The Tenants’ Union of Victoria and Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic raised  their concerns in a recent submission to Coroner Peter White over the deaths of  three Indian students in a house fire in Footscray.

Sunil Patel, Jignesh Sadhu and Deepak Prajapati died after a computer monitor  short circuited in their room. Another Indian student also often slept in the  room but was not home when the house caught fire in January 2008.

The students were living with a family of three, also from India, who had  rented the property. The family managed to escape the fire.

In the submission to the coronial investigation   the housing groups urged  Consumer Affairs Victoria to launch an education campaign for international  students to promote awareness of fire safety and housing rights.

The submission cited a witness statement from the fourth surviving student  who said he was unfamiliar with smoke alarms when he came to Australia and was  unaware they would normally be fitted inside Australian houses.

It was unclear whether the house had working smoke alarms at the time of the  fire, the submission reported.

But it also noted that a real estate agent visited the house in October 2005  and reported that smoke detectors were clean and working.

The housing groups have asked Coroner White to acknowledge the students were  homeless and the dwelling was being operated as a rooming house even though the  residents considered it a share house and the arrangement was not  exploitative.

Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic manager Chris Povey said the students had no  other option than to live in “dangerous and overcrowded housing”.

“There are people living in housing like this all over the state – it’s a  ticking time bomb,” he said.

The submission reported that two real estate agencies had managed the  property from the start of the lease in 2005 but no inspections had taken place  in the two years before the fire. The first agent conducted an inspection at the  beginning of the lease.

The tenants’ union policy worker Mike Williams said legislation should be  changed so landlords and rooming house owners were responsible for ensuring  their properties were safe to prevent further deaths.

“The Residential Tenancy Act is currently silent on key safety issues,” he  said.

Final submissions will be presented to the coroner by February 11.