We’ve all heard – or lived – rental horror stories
Houses that have no insulation, hotter on the inside than it is outside.
Houses that only have enough hot water for one short shower a day.
Houses that have shorting electricity circuits, leaking water or even gas.
Houses that have all of these issues, that don’t meet basic living standards and are objectively uncomfortable places to live, that are still being rented out for over $500 a week.
Landlords would fix any of these issues immediately if they happened in their own home. But too often, they ignore tenants when they raise these repairs.
Hoping that instead, their tenants will just move out before they have to actually spend any money on their ‘investments’.
Renters are more likely to just do repairs themselves or move out rather than try to for their landlords to do them.
Tenants have no power in that relationship and services like VCAT take months to resolve cases.
This system, and power imbalance allows landlords to continue to shirk their responsibilities, leaving renters to either foot the bill, find a new place to live or continue living in uncomfortable and sometimes unsafe places.
A recent report by Anika legal, ‘too hot, too cold, too costly’ found that 38% of renters were cold almost all of the time in winter.
A Better Renting report ‘Cruel Summers‘ also found that 20% of Victorian rentals consistently exceeded the healthy temperature to sleep in overnight over the summer.
Renters can’t afford to run heaters and aircons day and night to make their homes liveable. They shouldn’t have to pick up the slack for neglectful landlords.
There’s no roadworthies for rentals, but maybe there should be.
Everyone deserves a comfortable place to live that at least meets minimum standards.
With the current power imbalance, that’s never going to happen. We can’t allow this broken system to continue unchecked.
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