A
Victory for Public Housing Tenants – and a message to Housing NSW – We are NOT going to take this anymore!
A Department of Housing tenant in
Sydney’s notorious Redfern area has successfully sued the Department of Housing
for failing to provide her with “quiet enjoyment” following an
ongoing dispute with a neighbour over antisocial behaviour.
The Consumer Trader and Tenancy
Tribunal found Housing NSW had failed to act within Residential Tenancies
Act 1987 – Sect 22, to ensure “reasonable peace, comfort or privacy of the
tenant”.
This landmark ruling opens the
floodgates for other public housing tenants affected by antisocial behaviour to
take the Department of Housing to task for its poor management.
For
over two years Housing knowingly breached the terms of Ms K’s lease and did
little to rectify the breach in spite of a continuous effort on her behalf and
on behalf of all the other tenants in the street. One noisy, anti-social
neighbour and her many visitors destroyed the harmonious inner city community
by her continual loud parties, vandalism of property and criminal behaviour.
She was so successful in her intimidation of all the neighbours that several
were too afraid to give evidence in court.
Ms
K and the other neighbours submitted hundreds of pages of incident reports and
complaints over a two year period but Housing failed to act on a single one.
The file was passed around to more than ten staff members and each in turn
failed to act. In desperation and frustration, the tenants appealed to their
local Member of Parliament, Kristina Keneally, who also failed to act.
After
nearly two years of complete mismanagement by Housing NSW, the only recourse
was the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal and papers were filed in August
2010. Initiating delaying tactics, HNSW failed to turn up to two of the three
hearings but the case went ahead without them. Over a hundred pages of evidence
was presented to the CTTT along with a series of tape recordings of the noise.
The only defence offered by Housing was a handful of fabricated incident
reports with incorrect dates and fictitious events.
In
the end after seven months delay, Ms K’s evidence spoke for itself and the
Tribunal upheld the claim and awarded a partial rent refund to the affected
family in March 2011.
For
many years families living in public housing have watched their communities
devolve into slums and their rights as tenants gradually be undermined and
diluted.
Once
the politicians start labelling it as “housing of last resort”, the motivation
of the public servants tasked to manage the portfolio wanes. They just
allocate new tenants to houses and then sit back and shuffle papers, write
reports and apply for promotions. The politicians create policy that will
never be enforced, then quote numbers and percentages at the media and the
media perpetuates the concept of “just Housos”.
By
far the biggest problem affecting decent tenant’s living standards is
anti-social behaviour.
This
is a broad brush and can be anything from barking dogs and disputes over common
areas through to to violent and noisy neighbours and vandalism of
property. Many acts of anti-social behaviour are not
criminal acts so the Police can do little but calm the situation
until the next time. These problems are not limited to public housing. Private
rentals are also affected, especially where they border onto large public housing
estates.
Housing
NSW have policies in place to deal with anti-social tenants but rarely
pursue the issue or enforce their own policy. They have many options available
to them: Acceptable Behaviour Agreements, Specific Performance Orders, CJC
Mediation, Renewable Tenancy, Transfer under Tenancy Management and finally
eviction.
However,
their tendency is to allow the problem to escalate until it is a Police
matter and they can successfully wipe their hands of it.
Early
intervention and implementation of existing policies would alleviate the
“crisis management” mentality. It would also alleviate the necessity of
burdening the Police service, DoCS and the Health Dept with problems that could
have and should have been solved within Housing.
The
noisy, anti-social tenant in Ms K’s case was never held accountable for her
behaviour; she was simply relocated to another property where she is free to
begin her reign of terror with another set of neighbours. She left behind a
trashed house and a $5000 cleanup bill for the NSW taxpayers to absorb.
So
the complete mismanagement of Housing NSW continues – unless more tenants make
them accountable. Ms K is hoping her experience will lead the way for more
cases to proceed to CTTT and that Housing will finally begin to act on their
own policies and that more tenants can look forward to peace returning to their
communities.
Footnotes
1. Residential Tenancies Act 1987 No
26 Sect 22 Tenant’s right to quiet enjoyment
(1) It is a term of every
residential tenancy agreement that:
(a) the tenant shall have
quiet enjoyment of the residential premises without interruption by the landlord
or any person claiming by, through or under the landlord or having superior
title (for example, a head landlord) to that of the landlord, and
(b) the landlord or the
landlord’s agent shall not interfere, or cause or permit any interference, with
the reasonable peace, comfort or privacy of the tenant in using the residential
premises.
(2) A landlord or a landlord’s
agent under a residential tenancy agreement shall not, during the currency of
the agreement, contravene or fail to comply with subsection (1).
Now amended to:
Residential Tenancies Act 2010 –
Sect 50
(3) A landlord or landlord’s agent must take all reasonable steps to ensure
that the landlord’s other neighbouring tenants do not interfere with the
reasonable peace, comfort or privacy of the tenant in using the residential
premises.
Find out more on Our House Swap – How
to make Housing accountable – the Basics
Source: www.ourhouseswap.com.au – Tenant SUES Housing NSW – and WINS!!!