Redfern Legal Centre has been campaigning for legislative protection for boarders and lodgers and other marginal renters for more than 20 years.
Our submission is informed by our long history of assisting people who are not covered by the provisions of the previous Residential Tenancies Act 1987 or the current Residential Tenancies Act 2010.
Our position, based on this experience, is that the current law does not protect boarders and lodgers sufficiently. Without the protection of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010, boarders and lodgers often experience issues with reclaiming bonds and security deposits and with collecting their goods, and often struggle to obtain sufficient reasons for and reasonable notice of the termination of their occupancy.
The draft legislation, in conjunction with the Boarding Houses Act 2012 does address a number of issues that currently exist in the boarding house sector. The inclusion of occupancy principles in the Act is a significant and welcome step for boarding house residents that will afford them much needed clarity regarding their rights and responsibilities.
Our submission is that the Regulation could go further to clarify and quantify minimum standards as set out in the Occupancy Principles in Schedule 1. We are particularly disappointed that the Boarding House Regulation, in its current form, does not include mandatory minimum notice periods that a proprietyr is to give an occupant.
Redfern Legal Centre supports the standard occupancy agreement and the certainty and protections it will deliver to boarding house residents. The proposed reforms, although welcome, fail to provide concrete protections to residents facing termination, one of the most common problems we encounter failing in our service.
This could be overcome by incorporating the suggested notice periods in the Standard Occupancy Agreement for general boarding houses into the Boarding House Regulation 2013 as mandatory notice periods.