Our 40th birthday is being held at Sydney Town Hall on 27 April. Join us to celebrate, reminisce and support a great cause – helping us provide much needed support to vulnerable people for years to come.
This will be a birthday celebration like no other! Prepare to kick up your heels with MCs Wendy Harmer, Triple J’s Veronica and Lewis, and motown, soul, rock, mod and 60s– 80s pop from live band, The Pragmatics! We’ll also be be auctioning off great prizes to support our work.
The NSW election in March brought with it a commitment from the Government to review police oversight. The emphasis of the review by former shadow Attorney-General Andrew Tink is to improve police accountability by streamlining the current system of police oversight.
With Mr Tink’s report to be delivered in August, NSW awaits to see if significant changes will be made to how police are made accountable for their conduct.
RLC’s view in summary
RLC has assisted a large number of public housing tenants to get repairs done through advocacy and Tribunal representation. We provide the following submission and recommendations in relation to the experiences of the tenants in the inner Sydney area specifically.
RLC has not seen any significant change in the experience of public housing tenants seeking repairs to their premises since the 2016 Inquiry. We have once again identified a set of common concerns from tenants with the way that repairs and maintenance of public housing stock are conducted.
Some of these concerns include:
- The lack of co-operation between the Department of Communities and Justice (‘DCJ’) and the Land and Housing Corporation (‘LAHC’);
- The inaccessibility of the eRepairs portal and maintenance call centre for tenants experiencing a vulnerability and tenants from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds;
- The unnecessary delay to repairs due to LAHC’s scoping and quoting practices;
- The reluctance of LAHC to carry out structural repairs to public housing stock;
- Issues with the conduct of contractors towards tenants; and
- Delays facing tenants seeking repairs to their properties.
A genuine commitment to maintaining and repairing public housing properties is needed. The implementation of previous recommendations has not seen a tangible improvement in the condition of properties for tenants or the accessibility of maintenance and repairs.
Our submission responds to a number of specific issues, providing client case studies that further highlight our concerns, and makes 16 recommendations:
Recommendations
1. More training should be provided to Client Service Officers to understand their role in assisting tenants to seek repairs and maintenance to their properties.
2. DCJ should act on the recommendations provided by LAHC with respect to temporary accommodation for tenants.
3. LAHC should retain a greater oversight over its contractors and quality assurance. This could be done through assessing larger samples of work or conducting a site inspection immediately where tenants inform LAHC that the works either have not been done or are have not been completed to an appropriate standard.
4. Tenants, particularly those who are not able to engage electronically or by phone to log maintenance requests and those with English as a second language should be made aware of alternative methods to log and request maintenance and repairs. This information should also be provided to tenants in a written form and translated into relevant community languages. Client service officers and local offices should be trained in ways to assist tenants to obtain repairs to their properties and actively engage in supporting tenants experiencing vulnerability to obtain repairs to their premises.
5. LAHC and DCJ should review the eRepairs portal and ensure that tenants are able to report any repair and maintenance issues they are experiencing at their property. LAHC and DCJ should also ensure that information is provided to tenants in relevant community languages.
6. LAHC should limit site inspections as far as possible to limit the intrusion on a tenant’s daily life. Alternative quotes, where necessary should be obtained without delay and without need for further inspections of the tenant’s property.
7. LAHC should demonstrate a genuine commitment to carrying out structural repairs of its public housing stock.
8. LAHC should implement a policy to ensure that when contractors are sent out to address repair issues inside a tenant’s premises they accurately assess whether there is a structural issue as the underlying cause and if so, make sure that the structural repair is addressed as a priority.
9. Maintenance workers and sub-contractors should be required to undertake Aboriginal cultural awareness training, CALD cultural awareness training and mental health training. LAHC should also ensure that it has a policy for contractors which requires that they engage interpreters when required.
10. LAHC should implement a policy outlining a contractor’s obligations when scheduling site inspections/repair visits with tenants. The policy should make it clear that contractors must not report to LAHC that they were refused access by a tenant if they fail to attend at the scheduled time and a tenant is not home.
11. LAHC should introduce clearer policies and enforce those policies, with significant consequences for contractors and sub-contractors who have been found to have treated tenants without respect.
12. LAHC should develop clear guidelines about NCAT participation by DCJ and LAHC representatives in repairs matters. They should require that a representative acting on their behalf is prepared for hearing and has appropriate instructions so as not to unnecessarily delay the matter.
13. Where LAHC has accepted that repairs are required and that the tenant has been unable to have full use of their property or has suffered financial/non-financial loss, an offer should be made to settle the financial aspects of the matter along with the substantive repairs.
14. LAHC and DCJ should review their internal policies and practices in conducting litigation to ensure that they are complying with the model litigant policy in all litigation, especially where litigants are unrepresented. Complaints of non-compliance with the model litigant policy should be investigated by an independent body such as the Housing Appeals Committee or the Ombudsman and appropriate action taken to remedy that non-compliance.
15. All client service officers and advocates who are expected to attend NCAT on behalf of DCJ should be trained in the requirements of the model litigant policy and should adhere to that policy.
16. LAHC should fund all disability modifications where a tenant has shown they have a need for the property to be altered and the property is suitable for the alterations.
Case Study: Elijah’s* bathroom repairs
Elijah (not his real name) lives by himself in a small social housing property owned by LAHC. As a result of a leak from his upstairs neighbour’s bathroom, Elijah experienced significant mould, bubbling and dripping from his bathroom ceiling. After reporting the issue, LAHC contractors attended and cut off power to the bathroom for safety reasons. No further action was taken and Elijah was left with no means to ventilate the bathroom, nor any lights.
Elijah contacted RLC and we represented him in NCAT where we obtained an agreement by consent that LAHC would carry out the works within a specified time frame. LAHC did not comply with this agreement and no works had been scoped or completed by the date ordered by NCAT. The matter needed to be relisted in NCAT before LAHC finally completed repairs to make the bathroom safe again.
Not long after repairs were considered completed, Elijah informed RLC that the issue had returned and had not been rectified. RLC was again required to advocate on behalf of Elijah to LAHC to have the repairs finally completed after contractors had declared them to be complete.
Elijah was not able to use his bathroom for a total of close to six months.
There is still a clear lack of oversight of contractors and sub-contractors working on behalf of LAHC which often leads to unsatisfactory outcomes for tenants who have complied with their obligations to report maintenance and repairs issues. Regardless of any decision to contract its maintenance obligations to another body, LAHC is still ultimately responsible under the Act for ensuring that properties are provided and maintained in a reasonable state of repair.
*Name has been changed
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In December 2020, RLC's tenancy team made submissions to the Follow-up Review of the Management of Public Housing Maintenance Contracts, in follow-up to concerns identified during the 2016 Inquiry.
This audit is considering whether actions in the Strategy are effectively implemented and producing outcomes in reducing homelessness, and whether the department’s response to COVID-19 for people experiencing homelessness was effective.
RLC's submission highlights our concerns about the effectiveness of the current processes identified in the Strategy in supporting the prevention of homelessness. We endorse the submission provided by the Tenants’ Union of NSW, and provide recommendations as a supplement to these concerns.
RLC's views in summary
Access to housing is a human right. Having a safe and secure house in which to reside is essential to the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of a community. Housing also influences the sense of belonging experienced by individuals.
Within NSW, the housing system has failed to ensure that everyone has access to safe, secure and affordable housing. As a result, vulnerable renting households in both the private and social housing rental markets have an increased risk of entering into homelessness.
RLC has assisted a large number of tenants who are at risk of homelessness with advice, advocacy and representation. In 2020, RLC gave 1901 advice sessions and approximately 550 related to termination.
RLC endorses the submission provided by the Tenants’ Union of NSW.
We provide the following short submission and recommendations as a supplement to the concerns raised by the Tenants Union. RLC provides this submission in response to Focus Areas 1.2 and 3.3 of the Strategy.
Our submission focuses on the experience of social housing tenants and the impact of COVID-19 in increasing the risk of homelessness within the Inner Sydney area.
RLC has identified the following concerns with the effectiveness of focus areas 1.2 and 3.3 of the Strategy in producing outcomes to reduce homelessness:
- Focus Area 1.2: The tendency for social housing providers to pursue termination as a first step rather than a last resort.
- Focus Area 3.3: Lack of trauma-informed and culturally appropriate practice by front-line housing provider staff.
In terms of the government’s response to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, RLC is concerned that there has been an unwillingness to provide adequate protections to renters who have been affected by COVID-19.
We note that the actions identified in the Strategy also have significant implications for renters in the private rental market where there are also insufficient protections in place to support vulnerable renters. As our submission will largely focus on the experience of our social housing clients, RLC refers to the submission provided by the Tenants Union to highlight the wider implications for renters within the private rental market.
RLC's submission makes the following recommendations:
- DCJ should form local partnerships with support services and non-government organisations and commit to actively referring a tenant to these services before engaging in any action to terminate a tenancy.
- In order to ensure a trauma informed and culturally appropriate service, all social housing providers should be required to recruit staff with skills and expertise in trauma informed care and culturally appropriate service provision, and provide regular training and supervision in trauma informed care and culturally appropriate service provision.
- The COVID-19 amendments to the Act and the Regulations should be amended to include a requirement that landlords are required to reduce the rent where a tenant can demonstrate that they have been financially impacted by COVID-19. Additionally, legislation should be created to ensure that tenants are not crippled by the debts accrued through rental arrears during the COVID-19 pandemic. The amendments to the Act and Regulations should be extended until at least the end of 2021.
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In January 2021, RLC made submissions to the Audit Office of NSW Responses to Homelessness audit – Response to the NSW Government’s Homelessness Strategy 2018-23 ('The Strategy').
This is an exciting opportunity for you to deepen your interview skills by surveying our clients about the experience of seeking legal help.
The time commitment for this role is approximately half-a-day per week (or more if you have time). You will be calling clients to conduct a brief survey immediately after they have received legal advice, and/or after three months.
There two types of information you can request from NSW Police under the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (NSW):
Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS) conference explores how policymakers, practice designers and practitioners are using evidence to understand, respond to and prevent violence against women and their children. This year's event will be held online from 1-5 March, 2021.
