Are you ‘filthy’ at the condition of your rental property? Has your landlord increased the rent excessively? Do you want to see minimum standards for rental properties? Have your say now!
With less than a week to go before submissions close on the Residential Tenancy Act Review, the Tenants’ Union of Tasmania (TUT) has launched a quick and easy web form for tenants and friends to use to tell the Tasmanian Government that they want better rental conditions. The TUT wants as many submissions as possible and has created the web form so people with only five minutes to spare can make a meaningful contribution to the debate.
The Tenants’ Union’s Solicitor and Liaison Officer, Benedict Bartl said “I want as many tenants as possible to tell the Government that we are sick and tired of dirty, substandard housing, being kicked out with as little as two weeks notice and getting inspections with only 24 hours notice. I urge tenants to use the form and to tell their friends about it too.”
The TUT was reminded of the shocking conditions in which some properties are let following the inspection of a property late last week in which Joan Roberts* a disabled pensioner and tenant noted that she had spent a small fortune in time and money cleaning a property that she had only moved into shortly before Christmas:
The first time I walked through the door of my house the stench was so overpowering I dry retched. Everything was filthy and reeked of urine. But what could I do? I was desperate for a house having already been in contact with 5 different real estate agents and having applied for 15 properties. Since moving in I have spent $140 on cleaning products, scrubbed the cupboards so hard that the paint has come off and the filth I have found in my vacuum cleaner was as black as the ace of spades.
The TUT is recommending the introduction of minimum standards to ensure that tenants are able to move into properties that are reasonably clean and are kept in good repair throughout the period of the tenancy.Benedict Bartl also stated:
Tasmania has the worst minimum standards for residential properties in Australia. We are ‘filthy’ that there is no legal requirement that premises are clean at the start of a tenancy meaning that some tenants are forced to spend hundreds of dollars and lots of elbow grease cleaning up properties that should already be clean.
The TUT is calling on all tenants, former tenants and owners with an interest in better protections for tenants to write to the Government calling for tenancy reform. More information here
*Joan Roberts is a pseudonym because she is worried that her landlord will evict her if her name appears in the media.
