Category Archives: Media coverage

Tenant advice services call for funding reinstatement

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Protesters to rally against funding cut for Tenant Advice and Advocacy Services   (reprinted from the Courier Mail 28-8-12. Reporter Koren Helbig)

PROTESTERS will today rally outside Premier Campbell Newman’s northwest Brisbane electorate office, demanding funding for a key tenancy advice service used by 80,000 Queenslanders each year be reinstated.

The Government has argued the Tenant Advice and Advocacy Services funding, which topped $20 million over four years, is better directed to new public housing properties.

Campaign organiser Peter Mott said the change could force more people on to the public housing waiting list. Continue reading →

Minister’s misinformed statements confound Logan service

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Picture: Derrick Tonkin Source: Quest Newspapers

Logan workers are shocked that the Minister for Housing thinks the role of the tenant advice service could be filled by impartial government agency the Residential Tenancies Authority.  Worker Wendy Clark also challenges the Minister’s veiw that cutting their funding will reduce the social housing waiting list.
To read the article click here.500,000 Queensland renting households, including those in the Logan area, will be left without any specialist service after October 31 unless the funding program – Tenant Advice and Advocacy Service – is reinstated.

Scrimping and saving or taxing tenants?

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Minister Flegg has just announced he’s on the lookout for parcel of land in Logan where his department can develop 200 units of housing at a multimillion dollar pricetag.  As a public private partnership and with a view to achieving mixed communities, only a proportion of the units will end up as social housing.

According to the Minister, it’s the ‘scrimping and saving’ that’s made the project possible, including the ‘contraversial axing of a tenants advisory service’, and freed up money for the government to contribute.

Scrimping and saving?? Given that tenant advice funding is derived mainly from tenant bond interest, isn’t it more like an additional tax on tenants, an appropriation of their bond interest at the expense of the only direct benefit they get from it – tenant advice services? 

These monies are simply not the government’s to save or scrimp. Continue reading →

Lytton MP mistaken thinking options for tenants covered after closure

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The member for Lytton, Neil Symes, is mistaken when he says options for tenants are covered when their local advice service closes at the end of October.  Tenant advice services are the only free specialised advice available for tenants in Queensland and the government has decided to withdraw funding from all 23 of them.  That’s despite the fact they are virtually consumer funded because the lion’s share of money for the program is generated from the interest on tenants’ bonds.

Mackay concerns aired in the press

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The Mackay tenant advice service recently aired concerns over the Minister for Housing & Public Works’ ‘false economy’ view.

The Minister wishes to redirect funds from the Tenant Advice and Advocacy program into the building of public housing.  However program funds will build less than one house per area covered by one of the 23 tenant advice services statewide and result in housing 20 households from a wait list of 30,000.

This compares to 80,000 renting households assisted annually by the Tenant Advice and Advocacy program.  Most of these households live in the private rental market and services help to keep people housed and off the social housing waitlist.  See the whole  story here Mackay 4-8

 

Rockhampton TAAS closure in the news

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Rockhampton tenant advice worker Debbie Willebrand is concerned about renters  in the area when their only free tenant advice service is defunded at the end of October.  During the month of May alone, 180 households were assisted.

Ms Willebrand points out that most of the households assisted are living in the private rental market, and the tenant advice service helps many of them to remain housed.  The Minister’s stated aim to reallocate tenant advice funding to put roofs over people’s heads is misguided because it belies the fact that these services are doing just that and reducing the demand for public housing.

In the article, the Minister fails to point out that the ‘funding’ from the Residential Tenancies Authority is actually interest generated on tenants’ bonds, which funds the vase majority of tenant advice services.

Read the whole article and the Minister’s comments at http://www.themorningbulletin.com.au/story/2012/08/16/tenant-advice-service-to-close/

Where will Gympie tenants go for advice?

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Back: Judy Brauer, Lee Prince, Donna Weaver, and Karen Winkel. Front: Tanya Easterby, Leonie Hempsall, Sue Deacon, Cyd Kelly, Kellie Stirton, Cynthia Less-Smith, Maria Toms and Sue Wade (Renee Pilcher)

Like many other regions, Gympie residents were perplexed by the decision to cut the local Tenant Advice and Advocacy service. http://www.gympietimes.com.au/story/2012/07/28/newman-axe-cuts-deeply-community-worker-support/