Marginal renters in Parliament today

It's a big day for marginal renters in NSW Parliament House today.




First there's the publication of the report of the Parliament's Inquiry into International Students Accommodation, which recommends, amongst others things, law reform for occupancy agreements with dispute resolution by the CTTT, and a scheme of registration and reformed standards for boarding houses, with regular inspections.

Then, showing how law reform for occupancy agreements can be done, Clover Moore (Independent MP for Sydney) introduces her Residential Tenancies Amendment (Occupancy Agreements) Bill 2011, which would provide for a set of fair and flexible 'occupancy principles' for all residential rental arrangements not otherwise covered by residential tenancies legislation, plus standard terms by Regulation, and dispute resolution by the CTTT.

These two pieces of work come at the end of a year that also saw the publication of the results of consultations for the Government's Interdepartmental Committee on boarding house reform, in which occupancy agreements law reform emerged as a strong theme; the Ombudsman's damning report on licensed residential centres for people with disability; and the TU's own 'Reforming Marginal Renting' paper.

On coming to power the Government identified marginal renting as a 'key' area for reform. The reports are in; it's time to act.

Think child safety

We've had a few warm days, and there's more to come as summer rolls around. For the Children's Hospital at Westmead, it's also peak season for kids being injured from falls from buildings, as people open up their windows and balconies.



With that in mind, the NSW State Government has recently launched a public education campaign to make people aware of the dangers of windows and balconies and what you can do to make them safer.

The first thing is just that: be aware. Go and have a look at your windows and balcony now. When you enter a room with a child, make it a habit to do a quick scan of the windows. When you're visiting friends and relatives over the holidays, make a check of the windows and balconies the first thing you do when you arrive.

In particular, the things to look out for are:

• Windows that can be opened more than 10 cm. You'll want to put a lock or some other barrier on these. For ordinary aluminium sliding windows, this is usually pretty straightforward: one or two of these clamp-style locks should do the trick.

For other types of windows, you may have to consider something more permanent, like a lockable bolt or a lockable winding chain, or some form of barrier, like bars (not more than 10 cm apart). An ordinary flyscreen is not a safety barrier - they keep flies out, not kids in.

• Balconies that have a balustrade less than 1 m high, or that has horizontal elements. The danger of a low balustrade is obvious (it's easy for adult to overbalance over these, too). What is surprising is just how many balustrades - including new ones, as pictured below - have horizontal elements, which essentially serve as a handy ladder for children.

You'll want at least some kind of barrier - glass, perspex or even a heavy mesh - covering the inside of this sort of balustrade. And, in any case, a proper lock on the door to the balcony.

• Furniture and fixtures near windows and on balconies. Chairs, beds, tables, toilets, baths, toy boxes, planter boxes... you can find any number of things, both moveable and fixed, that kids can use to boost themselves up and over a window sill or balustrade. And keep a look out for things that aren't near a window - but which a child could drag over to one.

Whether you own or rent, there's a lot you can do yourself to make kids safer around windows and balconies. Watch them. Arrange the furniture away from the windows and balconies. Use those clamp locks, if that suits your windows. If your windows already have locks that allow them to be locked open, lock them open to 10 cm, no more, if kids are about.

If you're a tenant and more needs to be done to make your windows and balconies safer, consider asking your landlord to install some new locks, or a barrier, or a better balustrade. Unfortunately, there is nothing in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010 that you can point to that specifically requires window limiting devices that can be set to no more than 10 cm.... but the premises do have to be in a reasonable state of repair, and fitted with locks and other devices to make the premises reasonably secure. You can point to these to get defects fixed, and you might suggest that if they're doing work anyway, they might as well do it so that you can lock the windows open to 10 cm, etc.

Alternatively, you can ask if you can get the work done at your own expense. Because fitting locks or barriers will invariably be a minor alteration, your landlord cannot refuse consent unreasonably. Depending on the work, this can be expensive, but you might also think it is a small price to pay to prevent an awful injury - or worse.

(But - and this is our own education campaign directed at politicians and policymakers - how easy it is for tenants to think, 'getting windows locks fitted is expensive... and we don't know how long the landlord will let us stay here... we could spend several hundred dollars getting work done and then have to move out in three months... I'll just try to keep an eye on the kids all the time....' Far better to amend the Act to specifically require that landlords install window limiting devices, and make a safer rental housing sector for everyone.)

Fixing the system - one question at a time...*

There can sometimes be a difference between what a policy is intended to achieve, and what actually happens on the ground. A good example can be found in the repair and maintenance of rental properties. For over twenty years, it has been government policy in NSW to require landlords to provide their properties for rent in a state fit for habitation, and to keep them maintained in a reasonable state of repair – this is currently reflected in the Residential Tenancies Act 2010. Despite this, one of the most common complaints of NSW tenants is that it can be difficult to get repairs done (the statewide network of Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Services takes between 6,000 and 7,000 calls about repairs each year).

That is not to say that landlords always avoid their repair obligations. But even with the best of intentions, the policy does not uniformly achieve its objective. (Thankfully another policy – that of dispute resolution through the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal – means that the objective is not thwarted in its entirety… Well, at least not in every case.)

A key strength of the Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Services is our ability to identify and monitor practice that does not properly align with an established policy. We do this by talking to tenants – or, more specifically, by answering questions about tenants’ rights and providing advice on how best to resolve tenancy disputes. This provides us with a formidable insight into how well renting laws, and the policies on which they are based, are working.

As a statewide network, we can observe the proliferation of trends in tenancy management practices throughout NSW, because we get a clear picture of the types of situations tenants are faced with on a daily basis. We’re well placed to see how trends affect tenants, and, because we are uniquely focused on residential tenancy law and practice in NSW, we’re also well qualified to comment. We are able to speak with our collective observations in mind.

On the strength of this, the network’s primary resourcing body – the Tenants’ Union of NSW – is recognised by the NSW Government and its agencies as a key stakeholder in matters concerning residential tenancies in NSW. The Tenants’ Union is frequently invited to share its perspectives through regular meetings with government departments such as Fair Trading NSW and Housing NSW, as well as other relevant bodies.

When all of this comes together, we can affect systemic change. Here’s an example of how it can work…

Some time ago, Housing NSW changed the way it processes requests for repairs. It moved from a system where organising repairs was included in the role of a client service officer, to one where it is solely the responsibility of an asset management team. The change has had an unforeseen result, because when a tenant takes Housing NSW to the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, it is a client service officer who turns up to respond, not an asset manager – even if the application concerns repairs and maintenance. A client service officer might enter into an agreement with the tenant and obtain consent orders about how and when repairs will be done, but they actually have no control over what the asset management team does. Asset management teams have, in many cases, taken their “scheduled work” plans to over-ride an order from the Tribunal, and declined to conduct repairs as per such orders. This is clearly wrong, but it has been a regular occurrence. There have been numerous cases across the state where Housing NSW has failed to comply with a repair order from the Tribunal. Some of these have resulted in tenants obtaining compensation once the matter has gone back to the Tribunal for an alternative remedy.

Tenants’ Advocates first spotted the issue through conversations with tenants in the Greater Sydney area, but it soon became apparent that this is a statewide problem. The Tenants’ Union raised the matter with Housing NSW as soon as we had the evidence to demonstrate both the nature and the extent of the problem – evidence that we obtained from Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Services who gave it with the permission of their clients. Housing NSW agreed that the issue was of concern, and undertook to look into it.

Now, it has taken some time, but we understand that Housing NSW has recently restructured its internal processes to ensure client service officers and asset managers are in more effective communication when it comes to responsive repairs.

The proof, of course, will be in the pudding – and we’ll be relying again on our conversations with tenants to see whether or not this proposed solution works.

Thus, by contacting your local Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Service with a question about your tenancy, you’re also helping to fix the system.

* This article was recently published in the 'Tenant News', the TU's quarterly newsletter. For more articles and back-issues, see here!

Patronising the patrons

Ever wondered what it feels like to be regarded as purely second rate?

If you're among the one in four people in New South Wales living in rented accommodation, chances are you already know.

Not only may you have to endure the absurdity of a no-cause eviction without a right of reply - rendering your home unnecessarily insecure, and undermining the 'balance' between landlords and tenants that our current renting laws were supposed to achieve (we've talked about this many times before - see here, here and here) - but you will also, from time to time, come across standards of behaviour amongst the propertied 'elite' that will leave you in little doubt as to your apparent position in the Australian social hierarchy.

Examples of this phenomenon can be found all over the Brown Couch: wedged down the back of the seat, under the cushions, and scattered throughout the mass of well-thumbed tomes over there on the old pine coffee table... It's almost as though someone stuck a "kick me" sign to your back, just as you stooped forward to sign your latest residential tenancy agreement.

Here's another example of the sort of thing we're talking about, courtesy of a tenant on the NSW mid-north coast:


... and as it happens, this particular tenant wasn't even in arrears. They'd just missed a payment and were thus not the expected 14 days in advance. (Technically, any termination notice issued on that basis would be invalid - but of course that rarely stops it from happening.)

Many landlords, and the real estate agents who work for them, tend to lord it over their tenants. Quite simply, this is because they can. Indeed, our national obsession with wealth creation through property acquisition almost requires it - and our renting laws well and truly enable it. You see - for the time being at least - there's not the kind of money in rents that you can get from capital gains, and this means that when it comes to dabbling in real estate, tenants often just seem to be in the way... so naturally the law allows landlords to move them on without needing a reason.

But it runs deeper than that. Without the security of knowing that you can't lose your home without some kind of crisis attached to your own ability to pay for it, as a tenant you become accustomed to simply sucking up really shabby treatment. Property managers (be they DIY landlord or professional real estate agent) become just as accustomed to dishing it out. Because you don't really have a choice - they could just kick you out, and tell all their mates not to rent a place to you either.

They've got you over a barrel, and some of them just can't help but rub it in... This, we suspect, is why whenever asked whether we're renting or buying, tenants often sigh, "oh, we're just renting at the moment".

Okay, so the law has to change to ensure renting in New South Wales is not unnecessarily insecure. But more than that, we need to adjust the lens through which we see the landlord/tenant relationship. The tenant is, after all, the consumer of the landlord's (probably tax-payer subsidised and highly leveraged) 'housing service'. Without a tenant, most landlords would simply not be able to meet the monthly payment on the loan that's allowed them to buy the place to begin with. Yes, they might be in it for the capital gains, but they sure can't do it without cash-flow in the meantime.

Of course, potential new tenants are a dime a dozen at the moment, due to the unbearably high cost of buying property (we've talked about that plenty on the Brown Couch too) - so there's not a lot of 'consumer power' to be exercised on this side of the property divide. But that doesn't mean tenants should just put up with being treated like a lower class of idiot...

This is, after all, somebody's home we're talking about. Have another look at that letter above. Then ask yourself - what would you expect the bank to say to you if you were a day or two behind on the mortgage?

Getting passed on

Any Brown Couch readers ever had an interest rate cut 'passed on' to you in the form of lower rent?

No? Didn't think so.

Maybe we need to get the Federal Treasurer to include that message in his pre-RBA Board meeting media messages. For the past week Wayne Swan has been in the media saying that there would be 'absolutely no excuse for the banks not to pass on any rate cut that was delivered by the Reserve Bank'.

OK, so he wants to put what pressure he can on the banks – there's no harm in that, is there? Actually, we think there is, when it distracts the government from our real problem with debt, and particularly housing debt. The really important problem is not interest rates, but the huge size of the debt on which interest is levied.

(Source: RBA Chart Pack – Interest Rates, October 2011)

(Source: RBA Chart Pack – Household Sector, October 2011)

But it is the banks' interest rates that have caught the government's attention, so that its reform agenda is directed to increasing competition amongst lenders – including by encouraging new sources of credit (and there's been about $14 billion worth of tax-payer funded encouragement so far, through purchases by the Australian Office of Financial Management of residential mortgage backed securities).

The risk is that lenders will compete not only through lower interest rates, but also by drumming up more business through reduced lending standards – hence more debt, and more risky debt.

What the banks really need is not the supposed discipline of the market, but the discipline of regulation, that actually gets at the amount of debt that households, and the economy, is carrying. Countercyclical captial adequancy requirements, perhaps? New controls on credit, such as maximum loan-to-valuation ratios? For more, have a look at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's recent report on 'Tackling Housing Market Volatility' in the UK, around pages 35-40 or so.

Tenancy culture studies: Housos

Following the premiere on Monday of SBS's long-awaited/dreaded new series, Housos, the Institute of Tenancy Culture Studies convenes a colloquium of the Brown Couch's regular correspondents: Chris, N.C. and Leo.




Chris: Housos depicts life in public housing in suburban Sunny Vale, with Shazza and Dazza and their assorted friends and enemies – notably Franky, played by the show's mastermind, Paul Fenech. We're told by series narrator, pokie-lounge lizard Wazza, played by Ian 'Turps' Turpie, that Franky is the sort of fellow who has very good luck, and very bad luck, while Shazza and Dazza seem more consistently unfortunate. So, in this week's premiere, Dazza attempts to acquire a disability for the purposes of qualifying for the pension, while Franky literally falls into one, after resisting arrest and fleeing from the police, then stealing a fire engine, then sparking a rampage by the local Lebanese gang. (Franky loses it all when he administers an incriminating beat-down on his ex-fiancee's de facto in the Centrelink car park.)

Ostensibly a madcap satire, Housos transcends the conventions of the genre, effecting a shift in the satirical subject from the characters to the viewer. It ridicules not just its characters, but our own recognition of, and implication in, the stereotyping on which the humour depends. In this sense Housos is, so to speak, a post-satire -

No, sorry, I can't go on in this vein. The show is rubbish. I wish it wasn't. I wanted to have something other than the predictably negative reaction to it, but Housos is so predictable, and so bad, that it deserves the predictable response.

Housos is a tedious rehearsal of old insults and stupid antics. It's just wretchedly unfunny. What did you think, Leo?

Leo: Housos isn't for the latte-sipping yuppies. Paul Fenech says it's by, for and with the "real people", the ones who are never shown on TV because the rest of us don't like them. Fenech knows his audience, and he plays to them. When his first series, Fat Pizza, started, it was beloved in the first place by the wogs, the young men in cars who've maybe watched Scarface a few too many times, who've listened to Tupac a few too many times.

He's continued this tradition here, along with enough hangovers of the older shows to retain the audience built in Pizza (his one-man revival effort of the word stooge cracking on after more than a decade). Is it a high-brow, intelligent comedy that Oliver Wilde fans will quote to each other as wittily constructed repartee? No, no it's not. This tickles the funny bone with just a little bit of petrol, a little bit of flesh, and a lot of crude humour. That may be exactly what his audience is after.

The gallow's humour of those faced with a horrible reality is often incomprehensible by observers. The Brown Couch has discussed the work disincentives that "Housos" face, the inadequacy of the benefits and the hoops recipients have to jump through. Is it surprising this becomes fodder for comedy? It's a ridiculous situation after all. There seems to be no political will to effect change, and there's no shortage of people willing to decry the residents of Housing as various forms of lazy, undeserving and so on. Maybe that's the way to see this show – it appeals to and deals in the life that the rest of Sydney and Australia don't want to deal with. It's the laughter of the hopeless, perhaps even the voice of the voiceless.

Chris: Oh come on, Leo! Housos employs the same sort of humour as dwarf-throwing, and is probably enjoyed by the same people.

N.C.: Well I'm not too sure about any dwarf-throwing, Chris, but look I agree. It's shaping as a series of predictably unfunny cheap shots and tired insults that have ultimately diminished my opinion of Fenech. I have struggled to find something to redeem him, given the calibre of his previous work Pizza, but I keep coming up short. There is nothing funny or clever about Housos....

It's a misguided piss-take on how 'poor people' live – but it could so easily have been something good. It could have – no, it should have taken a shot at the very bureaucracies that routinely fail to alleviate the kind disadvantage it pokes fun at. During the first episode we saw enough glimpses of incompetent cops, ambivalent Centrelink workers and a dysfunctional public health system to get a sense of just how badly Housos misses the mark. Instead of shining a light on the maze of absurdities and inconsistencies that are inherent within our welfare system – the kind of thing that would make you laugh if it didn't make you cry – we get half an hour of name-calling, money-grubbing, substance abuse, child neglect.... Need I go on?

Chris: You know I wanted it to be better, but I'll admit, going into the show I wondered: could this sort of show – given its subject (public housing tenants), given its intended approach (sharp, skewering humour) – ever be funny? And as I watched Housos, desperately wishing I was watching something else, I thought of other similar attempts at humour. Good Times (same subject) was pretty funny, though the approach is a lot more friendly. Andy Capp was occasionally funny (when it wasn't making light of domestic violence), including when it skewered Andy's own conduct. Then I thought of other recent shows, not about public housing tenants, but about other 'little guy' subjects – like Kath & Kim, The Office and, yes, Fat Pizza – which were cruel to their subjects, and funny. They worked because they exposed pretension, vanity and other foibles that all of us recognise, including in ourselves.

As you say, Leo, public housing has ways of making people poor, and to insist that there must be no joking about public housing is to inflict an appalling additional degree of poverty upon public housing tenants. And I'm sure, like you N.C., that the 'situation' of public housing can elicit responses like pretension, vanity, greed, cunning and other human qualities that are the stuff of comedy. So to answer my own question, I think Housos could have been funny – which makes its failure all the more disappointing. If I had to say something nice about it, it would be that the stunts were OK.

N.C.: If you want to see how this subject matter can be dealt with far more sensibly and sympathetically – heck, I'll even go so far as to say humourously – go and track down a copy of the British series Bread. Now there was a household of scheming Housos, who could do whatever it took to stay above the bread-line... and still have you wanting them in your neighbourhood.

Leo: Don't forget the immensely popular UK series Shameless, a comedy-drama that also focuses on a public housing family. Occassionally violent and crude, and yet it clearly connected with a wider audience than just the housing estate dwellers it is based on.

On the subject of the audience: Fenech has created a dedicated following around this brand of humour and I expect a large number of those fans to follow him here. His inclusion of characters very similar to previous shows will certainly help with that. At the same time, he also proclaims that the show is for the people living in public housing. Angry Anderson claims that one third of the cast grew up in housing commission and are simply portraying themselves.

N.C.: I keep thinking to myself, "look it's only been the one episode. Maybe we should reserve our judgement for another couple of weeks. After all, these are the guys who brought us Pizza. When it comes to stinging social satire and holding up a mirror to PC backlash, they've got runs on the board. It's possible that they've got something up their sleeves, and will surprise us next week..." But I'm not sure I really believe that. Because with Pizza you had a bunch of self confessed "ethnics" making jokes about ethnic stereotypes. With Housos they've moved into an entirely new arena, and it's one that they appear far less comfortable with.

Chris: I see next week's show is about Dazza getting Shazza to hospital to give birth – a jesting jab at the feckless fecundity of the poor. Count me out.

N.C.: Certainly they're missing the key ingredient of self-reflection that made Pizza so marketably funny.

Leo: Pizza, at its core, was about sticking it to the stooges – the customers, the boss, the cops, anyone in authority who didn't understand what really mattered to the heroes. The core here is the same, but the range of authority figures has grown as the characters are further down the ladder. That finger-in-the-air attitude has appealed to Fenech's fans for over a decade, I think it will continue here.

N.C.: I'll give it one star.

Chris: Me too. One star. For the stunts.

Leo: The jokes, the stunts and a fair number of the characters could all be lifted directly from Pizza – and that's the way the fans like it. Three stars from me.

Spruiker spooked

Washington Irving's short story, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, in which the Headless Horseman dashes about on autumnal New York nights, is a Halloween favourite.




It's creepily fitting, then, that a week out from the holiday another rider is losing his head.

Terry Ryder, property spruiker, hurls the following pumpkin at the campaign group, Australians for Affordable Housing, in the business pages of The Australian:

SOME activists see property investors as the great enemies of first-home buyers.
Their core belief, unsupported by evidence or logic, is that homes are unaffordable because investors drive up prices.
Australians for Affordable Housing appears to think that nobbling investors will strike a telling blow for first-time buyers: remove negative gearing and increase capital gains tax, and homes will be affordable.

Our own modest attempt at furnishing some evidence and logic about negative gearing's contribution to the high cost of housing can be found here. Ryder, on the other hand, supports his argument by referring to a survey of opinions of first home buyers (conducted by an originator of residential mortage-backed securities) as to whom they're having to outbid.

Evidence and logic? Riiight.

The argument itself is a strange one too. Ryder says that it's not investors (we call them speculators) who are pushing up prices, it's other owner-occupiers. We might agree up to this point: as we've noted previously, the tax preferencing of owner-occupied housing is at the heart of house price inflation.

But then Ryder makes an abrupt about-turn: he says that to 'attack Australians who buy rental properties' is to 'undermine the financial base of 70 per cent Australians' [ie those who own a house].

Sounds like those speculators have been pushing up prices after all. Good thing too, says Ryder: there's a 'strong national interest in having people invest in this way.'

There's heavy pressure on people to plan for a self-funded retirement, given the stress our ageing population is placing on the taxation and welfare systems.

Let's be clear: as an investment strategy, negatively geared property speculation is not 'self-funded'. It is 'funded' by a greater fool coming along to pay more for the property than the speculator paid (being the price paid to the person from whom they bought it, and interest to the bank from which they borrowed the money) – and every other tax payer who foots the public services bill that the negatively geared speculator is allowed to cast aside.

In fact, about $6 billion worth of the 'stress our ageing population is placing on the taxation and welfare systems' comes precisely from 'having people invest this way'!

Ryder wheels about again. Too bad, he warns:

There are limited options. Buy shares or buy real estate. Superannuation alone won't cut it.

No, actually, just buying real estate won't cut it (particularly if, as Ryder says, the population is ageing – are there going to be enough greater fools to buy all the property?). Here's another option: put your money (or, if you're game, your credit-worthiness and some borrowed money) to something that makes more than it costs. Something productive.

A final pass by Ryder:

The anti-property voices in the community not only wish for a big devaluation of our homes but are lobbying government to make it happen.
It's an extraordinarily irresponsible stance...

No, actually, encouraging people to think that they can fund their retirements by unproductive speculation in real estate on the basis that prices will keep going up has a much greater claim on 'extraordinary irresponsibility'.

For a much more sensible discussion of the issues than provided by Ryder, follow this link to a recent piece by Australians for Affordable Housing spokesperson, Sarah Toohey.

Well done, Australians for Affordable Housing: you've got at least one spruiker spooked.