September 2014 - Global Tenant, p. 12
In a nation where owning a home with a back yard has long been promoted as the housing ‘ideal’, renting an apartment is becoming the norm for more and more people. In Sydney, well over 50 percent of apartments are occupied by tenants and, with the city currently experiencing a boom in apartment construction, many more apartment renters are on the way.
Although tenants as a whole have an increasing stake in the way apartment buildings are run, they are given very little say under current laws. The setting and enforcement of building rules is the preserve of each building’s owners corporation: a mini-government where all apartment owners, including absentee owners, get a vote. In most of the country, owners make the rules and the only role for tenants is to follow them.
Rules in apartment buildings commonly concern matters like parking, noise and garbage disposal and are generally a good thing for all residents. Sensible rules help to promote harmonious, or at least functional, buildings. But not all rules are sensible and in a false democracy, where the majority of residents are often left out of the rule-making process, the stage is set for a host of tenant-unfriendly rules.
One large Sydney apartment building has recently taken to locking its own residents out under the banner of tackling the overcrowding and illegal activity that it says is rife in the building. The owners corporation of that building has introduced heavy-handed rules concerning the use of electronic swipe cards (ie. the residents’ house keys) that have seen Australian tenants fined and locked out of their homes tenants have their access cards cancelled over matters as trivial as lending the card to a visitor to go out to buy a bottle of milk. In order to get back into the building, the rules require locked-out residents pay an access card ‘reactivation fee’ of $150 (€103).
Some tenants have been locked out for days on end and it is understood that others have had to pay accumulated penalties in the thousands of dollars just to get back in to their homes. Most of these tenants have nothing to do with overcrowding or illegal activity.
Outrageous as they are, these sorts of rules are not confined to just one building. The spread of centralized electronic key systems that allow access to a building to be granted or revoked at keystroke has seen other buildings introduce similarly oppressive rules. Locking people out in order to get them to follow a rule or hand over money has never been easier.
Perhaps the most unfortunate thing for these apartment renters is that, so far, local laws meant to protect tenants have been of little assistance. Government authorities have said that current legislation does not empower them to take action in these types of cases. Tenants have the option of either paying to kick-off a potentially expensive and lengthy legal process, or paying the penalty demanded by the owners’ corporation. When a tenant is locked out of his or her home, it’s not much of a choice.
The issue exposes a blind spot in the law and reminds us that tenancy laws that seek to strike a balance between the interests of tenants and landlords are not the only laws that matter when it comes to tenants’ rights. In a situation where a landlord locks out a tenant under questionable circumstances, there are usually very clear laws that allow tenants to seek reasonably quick, affordable and effective redress in a Tribunal, with offending landlords facing heavy fines. Not so for those tenants unfortunate enough to be locked out by their building manager.
In the state of New South Wales, the laws that govern apartment living are currently under review and the government has already flagged some positive changes for tenants, including giving tenants more of a voice in how the buildings they live in are run. But this change doesn’t go far enough. There also needs to be clear provisions, similar to those that apply to landlords, protecting tenants - and individual owners, for that matter - against unreasonable interference by owners’ corporations.
Tom McDonald
Tenants' Advocate
