Home Truths

We're very pleased to present this guest appearance from Jennifer Stone, a renter in the Snowy Monaro region, who has recently started a group for renters in the region to connect and discuss local renters issues. The original version of this article was published on their Facebook page.

The home of the silenced

Snowy Monaro renters welcomes you to come into our place and sit with us a while. There is something vital we need to tell you, something which concerns us all.  If you come to know who we are and our situation, you will understand.

We come from diverse backgrounds, interests, beliefs and aspirations, yet we are a family, united by common experience. Though we are significant in number, we are marginalised, distained, unheard and unknown. We have no real shelter, but pay a high price to dwell where the walls of greed’s injustice over shadow us - and block us from a home.

We know our nations’ harsher reality, our nation’s pain. We offer you home truths, and hope you will hear us. Until we are heard, our nation is in plight.

Towns prosper when we prosper and whither when we thirst

While a substantial amount of our income goes to supporting landlords and real estates, we spend much that is left in our community. In this way we provide vital support to the local economy and help it stay afloat.  Our numbers have brought extra medical centres, high schools and supermarkets to service the community.

We work in almost every sector of the region. Our children represent a significant number of the student population in the regions’ schools.  Amongst us are also pensioners and those struggling to find jobs in our community. For those on social security payments without community or state housing, average rental costs are prohibitive. 

The economy is much impacted by the increasing and excessive rents in our region. Renters face great hardship and are struggling to find money for even the most essential items. There is a shortage of permanent rental properties appropriate to our means and needs.  As rents are becoming unaffordable, Snowy Monaro renters are increasingly forced to pay for sub standard housing with inefficient heating, lacking proper insulation. High power bills cripple our financial capacity.

If we complain at our conditions or at breaches by the landlord and real estate, we face eviction in retaliation, and inter real estate black lists. Indeed there is a special provision so landlords may give termination notices for “no grounds” – this is so the tenant can not argue their eviction (even with much evidence of retaliation by landlord and real estate).

As we are forced to leave a place and go to another, we have to find bond money, we lose pay days while moving and sick days from intense rental stress. Children suffer from such destabilisation, as does the whole community. In general we are in an ever growing inescapable cycle of debt. Our plight impacts the community’s well being as a whole. We see our regions’ potential for prosperity much diminished as rents become unaffordable - yet the financially powerful minority, seem blind to this.

We suffer from divisive and prejudicial myths

It seems there is a myth amongst some landlords who own local businesses that they are the backbone of the community. They say that renters are lowly “lazy”, “dirty”, drug addicted, poor “dole bludgers” who are beneficiaries of their “hard work”. They speak of us as second class citizens, less important than themselves. Some real estates call the renter “scum” and we know for sure they treat us as such.

Derogatory myths can create a painful reality. The myth that the majority of renters are financially poor has now come to express fact. As houses have become unaffordable, rent has become unaffordable. Both renter and mortgaged landlord share the pain of immense financial pressure, often in debt and living beyond their means – an economic climate stirred by the greed and power lust of just an elite few. This pressure has lead to an economy where those who have more financial wealth, gain more each day and those who have less financial wealth, lose more each day.

The average wage hardly changes while rents go up exponentially. Renters are paying their landlords’ mortgage along with their own increasing debts. Landlords who have no mortgage are greedily extorting tenants, renting out sub standard houses at excessive market prices. Such landlords hold shelter to ransom. As landlords increase their ability to buy yet another house, renters become more likely to never have a home. The myth that renters are lazy while landlords worked hard for what they have, purveys a great falsehood. Indeed, renters work doubly hard for what their landlords have! We are the hand that feeds the landlord, are we not?

Wisdom heals the prejudice and division

Those who have become financially impoverished are not worth less. The financially rich are not worth more.  There is nothing which can diminish the worth of any being.   All people are  intrinsically valid, necessary to each other and vital in their unique contribution. No one is better than or less than another. In truth we are really one, there is no division.

Everyone creates the community and all are responsible for the conditions of that community. Prejudicial myths inevitably create the worst of conditions for all. A myth which divides people by declaring some of greater worth and others of lessor worth, by any measure, must inevitably lead to a conflict for power and recognition. This conflict develops a ravishing greed which devastates and seeks to devalue all contesting its path. This in turn gives rise to mass poverty, disenfranchisement, marginalisation, cruelty and suffering.

A harmonious and prosperous community would grow, if it was understood that we are all equal yet unique, individual yet one. If all are seen of vital worth, no one would seek to devalue another nor make a house of greater value than the people who dwell there. Divisive myths of prejudice blind the powerful minority to their own truth and the truth of their nation. 

The home truths which can heal us – please listen, please hear us

We are your kin, your sisters and brothers, parents and grandparents, children, and, generations to come. We are one. In truth, we are you. What happens to any one happens to all.  No one is at home when all about them are homeless, paying for insufficient shelter, exposed to greed, extortion, repression, and eviction at a landlord’s whim.  A house which comes by way of life long debt or subjugation of another can never be a home for anyone. The nation cannot be at peace, when so many are unsettled.  

When values of decency are worth less than values of commodity our nation is impoverished.  Happiness, not commodity, is the measure of a nation’s wealth. A nation is truly wealthy when its people enjoy a peaceful home without fear of eviction, where all may contribute to society through unique expression, welcome in the nations embrace. A nation is not wealthy if its people are homeless, enslaved and in perpetual debt. If on paper a house is worth a million dollars, it is worth nothing to those who cannot call it home - that paper value serves no one if its cost destroys life. Money on a graph is not food we can eat and property on a graph is not a place to shelter.

Houses are homes and not commodity. Economists devoid of moral compass, call out triumphant when run down cottages sell at palatial prices - while homelessness ravages the nation. Who gains when the majority have no claim to home, striving to survive, and backs bent to power thirsty property managers who lack empathy, and distain ethics? How is it that the financially powerful minority of this nation sanctify greed without question – do they not see the greater part of their nations’ family in despair.  Muted acquiescence to raging greed makes all of us complicit in the theft of happiness from generations to come.

What we do to another we do to ourselves - when did people abandon this eternal guidance? The ancient truths have never changed, we reap what we sow. Seeds of kindness bear fruits of happiness, fulfilling and empowering all. When the nurturing harvest of this wisdom is ravaged, hunger for power grows, casting seeds which bear injustice, cruelty, drought and despair. 

There are elderly pensioners eating from cans of pet food to pay the rent, suffering the pain of eviction when the landlord sells for their needed profit, did you know? This is our pain as a nation, this is our home truth.

Let’s meet again and find a better way.

 By Jennifer Stone of Snowy Monaro Renters

Long fixed terms are not the solution

Domain ran an article the other day about 'long leases' – or to be precise, residential tenancy agreements with long fixed terms. People often suggest long fixed terms as a way of addressing the insecurity of renting, but we don't think they're the solution.

First, let's get clear on what fixed terms do.

Fixed terms are a hangover from the common law, which said every lease had to be for a term – and if it wasn't for a term, it wasn't a lease (resulting in lots of fun case law about what is a term... is 'until the end of the peanut crop' definite enough to be a term?). But never mind about that – it's a hangover, and the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 says a fixed term is not essential: you can have a residential tenancy agreement with a fixed term, or without.

Under the Act, a fixed term protects you (the tenant) from termination without grounds and termination on the ground of sale requiring vacant possession. It also protects from rent increases, but that protection is not absolute: you can get hit with a rent increase during a fixed term if the agreement has an additional term providing for it.

These protections are why people think long fixed terms are a good idea. But there's another side to a fixed term: during one, you cannot terminate without grounds either.

With those things in mind, let's consider the structure of our rental market. It is dominated by small-holding landlords: most (73 per cent) own a single property only. Most are in it as speculators, in pursuit of capital gains (for 66 per cent of them, their rental income doesn't cover the cost of owning). Their best chance for capital gains lies in being able to sell the property not just to other landlords, but to owner-occupiers too (because owner-occupiers also speculate in housing). And to do that, they have to be in a position to deliver the property to its new owner with vacant possession – that is, without you.

For those reasons, Australia's small-holding speculator landlords don't – and won't – voluntarily tie up their properties in long fixed terms.

And there's another implication of the structure of the market. These small-holding speculator landlords are amateurs (they prefer the term 'mums and dads'). Most would try to conduct themselves reasonably, but they don't trade on their reputations and there's not a lot of market discipline operating on them. When you apply for a tenancy, you will most likely have no idea who the landlord is, or how good or bad they may be. They could be a nightmare... and for that reason, tying yourself up in a long fixed term isn't a good idea for you, either.

Long fixed terms are an attempt at a legal fix that doesn't really fit with the structure of our rental market. To really make renting more secure, we need to address both the legal and structural causes of insecurity.

In terms of structure, we need a different type of landlord. Instead of small-holding amateur speculators, looking for the best chance to realise capital gains, we need the sort of landlord who is instead more in interested in receiving an ongoing trickle of cash, in the form of rents... from a multitude of properties, so that a problem in a single tenancy doesn't upset the whole enterprise. In other words, an institutional landlord. This sort of landlord would be a lot better disposed towards long-term tenancies... and because of their scale, they might trade on their reputations and be concerned about their customer relations, and you might be more disposed to consider a long-term tenancy with them too.

That sort of structural reform is going to take some time. Meanwhile, we can improve security in terms of the law, with reforms that are doable considering the present structure. Here's what we should do:

• Legislate a list of reasonable grounds for termination by landlords. The RT Act already has some (for example, 'failure to pay rent' and 'sale requiring vacant possession'), to we'd add:
• 'landlord or family member requires premises for own residence', 
• 'employment-related tenancy and employment is terminated',
• 'premises to undergo renovation requiring vacant possession, demolition or change of use'.

• Abolish termination by landlords without grounds (including termination at the end of a fixed term). This wouldn't cramp the style of landlords who operate reasonably (they'd use termination notices with grounds, as above), but it would give all tenants more peace of mind and assurance.

• Limit rent increases to not more than once in 12 months.

How landlords think, and how it shapes the rental market

'Landlords hit by glut of apartments'! That's a recent headline from the Fin Review; we enjoyed reading it literally.

As Ned said over on our facebook page, the article is an insight into how landlords think – landlords like Hugh Eriksson, marketing executive, North Shore local politician and landlord, who reportedly has 'bent over backwards to keep rents near to stable', such is the glut of apartments from which tenants may pick. Why, this young pup landlord has 'even allowed pets'! Oh, the humanity.

How landlords think affects more than just your ability to choose whether you'll keep a pet, important as that is. How they think affects the shape of the rental market. As we saw in those charts from Judy Yates, if there's a glut of rental housing, it is not at the low-cost end of the market, which is very tight indeed, but further up the scale of rents.

And how landlords think affects not just affordability, but also the security of rental housing.

Eriksson says this about his thinking as a landlord:

“You don’t just buy property for rent – you buy it for the capital growth,” he says.

Rent is money that tenants promise to pay, week after week, under legally enforceable contracts, but when it comes to capital gains, there's no such promise; pursuit of them is really just gambling on someone coming along, at some point in the future, who is willing to pay more. So why is Eriksson – like so many other landlords – so interested in capital growth?

It's because in our tax system, rental income (and income from work, interest, etc) is taxed at the full marginal rate – while capital gains are taxed at only half that rate.

Yes, we tax the proceeds of speculation – gambling, really – at half the rate of the proceeds of work, bank savings and rental income. Go figure.

About 1 266 000 Australian taxpayers have gone and figured, and borrowed to buy properties that rent for less than what it costs to own them (because of interest, more than anything). Two-thirds of landlords are in this situation, which is known as negative gearing. They are gearing, or leveraging, into the prospect of lightly-taxed capital gains – so they hope – while losing income.

In an internationally unique act of generosity, our tax system makes those loses easier to take by allowing the costs of rental property speculation to be deducted against other (non-rental) sources of income. This means landlords can wear bigger costs and push their leveraging harder.

The tax system also gives their hopes of capital gain a boost by not taxing at all any capital gains on housing used for owner-occupation at. This spurs people with money to spare to spend it on their own housing – housing that they may buy from another owner-occupier, or a from landlord looking to realise their capital gains.

So, from the point of view of the speculator landlord, the best prospects for capital gains are with properties that owner-occupiers might buy, particularly owner-occupiers who are trading up and speculating in their own housing. That means relatively high value, 'premium' properties, or as premium as the speculator can get. Think established locations, which tend to have established properties, and properties that are renovated or fit to be renovated.

As Erikkson says:

“You use the rent to cover the ­holding costs while you get the DA approvals for renovations.”
Once the renovations are done, he sells. “You get your capital gain that way,” he says.

You also get expensive and and chronically insecure rental housing that way.

Expensive because speculator landlords are buying relatively high-value, high-rent properties, and passing on the low-value, low-rent stock when it comes up for sale. And they're getting those higher rents too, because they're not really adding to supply in net terms (that is, as they're growing the amount of properties in the rental market, they are also growing the number of renters), and the growth in renters is coming from higher income households who can afford to pay higher rents. These households might actually be getting quite a bit of choice between nice houses in nice parts of town – enough choice, even, to be able to get their landlords to 'bend over backwards' on rent increases and pets. (Mind you, many of them would still probably rather be owners.) But for low-income renters, the low-rent properties they need have become scarcer, and less cheap.

And it's chronically insecure housing because it is is owned to be sold, particularly into the owner-occupier market.

These are the unhappy results of the way landlords think about owning rental properties. To change the rental market for the better, we need to change landlords' thinking, and to do that we need to change the rules that encourage speculation in housing. 
 

Renting versus owning: interactive graphs

The Reserve Bank's recent paper on renting versus owning has been given the interactive graph treatment by the Sydney Morning Herald.

It is well-worth playing around with, particularly to get your head around the sort of comparison the Reserve Bank was making between the two tenures.

Also worth playing around with: the Economist's interactive graph of house prices in real terms and relative to incomes and rents for various countries. These are different sorts of comparisons to the RBA's, and are the more usual way of considering whether housing is over-priced.

Finally, picking up on something that is missing in the RBA's purely financial analysis, here's our own graph of rental insecurity in New South Wales. Those areas where landlords can give termination notices of just 90 days, and without any grounds, are marked black.

The big stick

Legendary tenants advocate and TU Older Tenants Project Officer, Dr Robert Mowbray, looks at who's using the 'big stick' in tenancy – that is, the Tribunal.

 *

Big stick: a policy of acting or negotiating from a position backed by a show of strength. Origin from ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’, portion of African proverb quoted by Theodore Roosevelt.

Who were the big users of the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal (now amalgamated into the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal) in the twelve months to 30 June 2013?

Well, landlords of course …in sheer numbers. They lodged 23,888 applications in the Tenancy Division (75% of all applications) and 16,897 applications in the Social Housing Division (95% of all applications). 

But it's not as simple as that. Park residents lodged 1,739 applications in the Residential Parks Division and, indeed, this is 88% of all applications in that Division.

Looking a little deeper at the market share of each type of housing provision, a simple analysis shows that the biggest users of the Tribunal are community housing providers, with 14.5 applications for every 100 premises managed by community housing providers. They are followed by Aboriginal housing providers (13.0), Housing NSW (10.5) and park residents (7.7). And social housing tenants (including community housing tenants) are the least likely of all groups to use the Tribunal.

This can be visualised in the column chart below.

Why might this be the case? 

Let’s look first at community housing providers. There are a number of possible explanations as to why community housing providers are heavy users of the Tribunal – and in particular, why they are heavier users than Housing NSW.

Compared with public housing, community housing has fewer elderly tenants, who tend to have a stable fixed income, such as Age Pension, and also relatively stable expenditures. More of these tenants can pretty much ‘set and forget’ their rent payments which, of course, means fewer problems for Housing NSW.

Another explanation is the practices of community housing providers when dealing with rent arrears and disputes.

Housing NSW’s ‘Community Housing Access Policy’, February 2012, states:

4.4. Termination of Resident and Tenancy Agreements

Community housing providers must have fair and transparent processes in place to determine the termination of any resident agreement or a residential tenancy agreement under the Residential Tenancies Act 2010. This must include a process to advise residents and tenants about the circumstances in which a resident agreement or residential tenancy agreement may be terminated. Following a decision to terminate a residency agreement or a residential tenancy agreement, a community housing provider must issue, in writing, a notice to the resident or tenant explaining the termination and setting out a reasonable timeframe for the resident or tenant to vacate the premises. The termination of a residential tenancy agreement must be accordance with appropriate provisions under the Residential Tenancies Act 2010.

So, there is discretion for each community housing provider to decide in what circumstances they might initiate an application to the Tribunal. The policy of one Sydney-based community housing provider suggests that it uses the Tribunal as a ‘big stick’. This community housing provider applies to the Tribunal for a termination order, even though it is their expressed intention to obtain a performance order. And, they do this regularly, forking out the application fee each time.  This may or may not be common practice amongst other community housing providers.

In relation to managing rent arrears, this community housing provider’s ‘Policy and Procedures’, published on-line, states:

If a tenant is more than 14 days in rent arrears they will be served a letter for non-payment of rent, giving them 7 days to amend the arrears.

If the tenant does not respond and the arrears fall further behind, after 7 days, the Manager will issue a Notice to Terminate.

If the arrears are not cleared by the end of the Notice Period we will apply to the [NSW Consumer and Administrative Tribunal] for a Specific Performance Order where tenants have entered into a formal repayment agreement.

Where tenants have not signed a formal repayment agreement we will apply to the [NSW Consumer and Administrative Tribunal] for an order giving us vacant possession of the property and an order that the tenant pay all rent owing.

[However] at the Tribunal hearing we will not pursue an order for possession if the tenant consents to a Specific Performance Order to repay all arrears owing. If the tenant breaches this order we will apply to the Tribunal for vacant possession of the property.

The same community housing provider states:

Any Notice to Terminate issued for breach of the lease agreement will follow the same principles applied in the Eviction for Rent Arrears policy.

It is probable that community housing providers have a lower ratio of tenancies to tenancy managers compared to Housing NSW. Accordingly, they have more time to vigorously pursue disputes. This, in itself, is worth further investigation. However, in tandem with an explicit policy such as above, it will inevitably lead to a greater number of applications before the Tribunal. 

The figures for Aboriginal housing combine both properties owned by the Aboriginal Housing Office (but managed by Housing NSW) and Aboriginal community housing organisations. Their numbers are of the same order, with around 4,500 to 4,700 properties respectively. This would explain why their use of the Tribunal also is mid-way between that of Housing NSW and community housing providers.

Now let’s look at residents of residential parks. There are a number of possible explanations as to why residential park residents are heavy users of the Tribunal. 

Seventy-six percent of applications in the Residential Parks Division were about excessive rents and excessive rent increases. Because it is so costly for park residents to move, park owners have disproportionate market strength and therefore are in a position seek to extract a higher rent than may be justified. 

However, the park residents live in close proximity and enjoy solidarity in numbers. As a general rule, notices of rent increases are issued to all residents at the same time and this leads to their banding together to dispute excessive rent increases.   

Also, the more residents that dispute the rent increase then the greater the chance of success, because of the ‘comparable site fee’ argument and park owners saying things like 'we have 96 residents and only 20 of them are here – the other 76 are happy to pay the increase’.  The fact that a successful challenge often depends on numbers pushes the numbers up.

Also, unlike tenants of residential properties, residents of residential parks are not subject to no-grounds eviction and therefore are less vulnerable to retaliatory eviction for exercising their rights.

The low rate of applications from private tenants and social housing tenants requires a comment. A major reason for the smaller number of applications by private tenants would be their fear of retaliatory notice of termination. This interpretation is reinforced by results in the ‘Affordable Housing and the New South Wales Rental Market, 2014 Survey Report’, published by the Tenants’ Union of NSW on pages 11 and 12:

77% of respondents have put up with a problem or declined to assert their rights as a tenant because they were worried about adverse consequences.

It may be that social housing tenants hold the same fear. This shouldn't be the case, however, because social housing landlords are required to be more transparent. Nevertheless, in the case of social housing tenants, they may be discouraged because they are up against a big authority in their lives and a repeat player in the Tribunal. They may feel that they lack the information and skills to make their case. This is one reason why Tenants Advice and Advocacy Services are so important.  

Having said this, the higher rate of applications from private tenants than from social housing tenants is probably is probably at least partly explained by claims for return of rental bond at the end of tenancies. In the 12 months to 30 June 2013, there were 4,543 bond disputes in the Tenancy Division, compared to just 48 in the Social Housing Division. 

When considering the use of the Tribunal, we should keep in mind that Tribunal applications mean different things between different types of applicants. Applications cover a wide range of types of applications. A few examples will suffice:

•       42% of applications in the Tenancy Division were lodged by private landlords seeking orders for termination for non-payment of rent.

•       2% of applications in the Tenancy Division were lodged by tenants seeking orders for repairs.

•       54% of applications in the Social Housing Division were lodged by social housing providers seeking orders for termination for non-payment of rent.

•       1% of applications in the Social Housing Division were lodged by tenants seeking orders for repairs.

•       9% of applications in the Residential Parks Division were lodged by park owners seeking orders for termination.

•       76% of applications in the Residential Parks Division were lodged by park residents for orders relating to rent / excessive rent increases.

So, what's at stake is very different, depending on who is applying. When a group of park residents apply against a rent increase, what's at stake? The park operator might end up getting the same rent as as they currently get, or perhaps more (but not quite as much as they had wanted). When a landlord applies for termination, a tenants' home is at stake. Many orders sought by social housing providers for termination for non-payment of rent would have led to performance orders without the tenancy being terminated. This is the ‘big-stick’ interpretation cited above on how some community housing providers use the Tribunal.

Well done Frances Abbott, tenant

The Tenants' Union of NSW congratulates Frances Abbott on asserting her rights as a tenant.

Ms Abbott, formerly resident of Sydney, now of Melbourne, had entered into a tenancy agreement for a flat in Prahran but ended the agreement early because the premises were not secure – amongst other things, the flat had windows that did not lock.

Ms Abbott's landlord claimed instead that the agreement was ended unlawfully, and sued for compensation for loss of rent. Ms Abbott defended the landlord's claim in the Victorian Civil and Administrative by giving evidence as to the poor security of the premises and establishing the grounds for her termination of the agreement.

The Tribunal has not published its decision on the matter, but according to the media reports Ms Abbott was successful (and the landlord is sore about it).

Good on Frances Abbott. All Australian States and Territories have residential tenancy laws that place obligations on landlords in relation to the security of rented premises. The obligations vary between jurisdictions – in Victoria, landlords are specifically required to provide locks on external doors and windows; in New South Wales, the obligation is stated more generally so that landlords must provide locks and security devices to ensure that the premises are reasonably secure – but nowhere can landlords rely on the old principle of caveat emptor to let insecure and unsafe premises.

If you are concerned about the security of your home, seek advice about how you can assert your rights.

Grattan Institute on housing subsidies

We were just saying in Anti-Poverty Week how our housing system, in the absence of a genuine housing policy, enriches some while it impoverishes others – now the Grattan Institute puts some numbers on the problem.

The Institute's report, 'Renovating Housing Policy' looks at the cost and allocation of subsidies provided by Australian governments and delivered through the private housing system.

The winners are home owners, recipients of $36 billion (on average, $6100 per household) in tax expenditures and other benefits each year. These subsidies come from the exemption of owner-occupied housing from capital gains tax, land tax, income tax (on imputed rents), and the assets test for the Age Pension, and the First Home Owners Grants. Take a bow, home owners.

Runners-up are the landlords, recipients of $6.8 billion (on average, $4500 per household) in subsidies per year. These subsidies come from our generous tax treatment of capital gains and negative gearing.

And limping in in third place: private renters, whose Commonwealth Rent Assistance is worth, on average, $2900 per household per year.

All in all, more than 90 per cent of housing subsidies go to property owners. Some further dimensions of the inequity of our housing system are also made clear in the report.

First, rates of home ownership are declining, particularly amongst younger and lower-income households, so access to these subsidies is concentrating amongst older households and higher-income households.

Secondly, amongst owner-occupiers and landlords, the largest subsidies go to the households with the highest incomes.

The report concludes with a call for the renovation of housing policy, including such sensible measures as a broad-based land tax, a reduction in the preferential treatment of negative gearing and capital gains, and tenancy law reform to improve tenants' security and freedom of choice (for example, the choice to keep a pet).

A final thing: you might wonder where social housing fits in housing subsidy league table. The report doesn't say, but according to the most recent data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, of public housing households who receive a rental rebate, the average amount is just under $6300 per year. Which puts their level of housing subsidy just ahead of most home owners, but still behind the level of subsidy that goes to homeowners in the top 20 per cent by incomes.

International human rights and public housing terminations

Last month Justice Kevin Bell, of the Victorian Supreme Court, delivered the Costello Lecture at Monash University. His topic: 'Protecting public housing tenants in Australia from forced eviction: the fundamental importance of the human right to housing and home.'

 (Justice Kevin Bell)

There's a quick report of it here, but it is really worth reading the lecture in full – download it here.

Please read and reflect.

Tax Forum begins

The National Tax Forum begins today: let's hope housing is front and centre in the discussion. It certainly has been in the media, with some very good pieces on last night's 7:30 report, and today on 'The Drum', as well as in last week's Herald.

(Groan.)

The Irvine piece on land tax, in particular, moved Brown Couch reader and legendary tenants advocate, Dr Robert Mowbray, to write to us and second our motion that it be made required reading for anyone interested in housing justice.

And as Robert points out, this is not just about affordability – land tax reform would also go a long way to helping achieve greater security for tenants. This is because security is not just of matter of what the law says about the termination of tenancies by landlords (and as N.C. has recently discussed, our laws still say landlords can give termination notices without disclosing any grounds for termination whatever); it is also a matter of the structure of the rental market and the investment strategies of landlords.

The structure of the Australian rental market is distinctive for absence of large institutional investors, and the dominance of individual landlords who own one property only. These are the so-called 'mum and dad investors' – or 'amateur speculators', as they are known around here. And because land tax is levied on the total value of land holdings above a certain threshold, it strongly favours these small-holding players above large-holding institutions.

And what are these small-holding players playing at? They're after capital gains, and this means being able to sell when it suits them, including into the market for owner-occupied housing. And this means being able to readily oust a tenant and regain vacant possession of the property.

Across Australia, residential tenancies legislation reflects the basic structure and strategy of the amateur speculator-dominated market. And it, in turn, reflects our tax system.