By Joel Dignam, Executive Director

As 2018 draws to a close, it's worth reflecting on what we've achieved and what's changing around Australia to help renters have stable, affordable, liveable homes. 

Changes in the ACT mean it's now easier for renters to get a loan for their bond, helping people to secure a tenancy in the private rental sector.

Tenant organisation Better Renting has welcomed proposed changes to ACT renting laws and questioned the motives of opponents.

Better Renting is part of the Make Renting Fair CBR Alliance, which has been campaigning for an end to “unfair evictions”, a fairer system for rent increases, and minimum standards for rental properties. They say that proposed rental reforms – introduced in the ACT Assembly on Thursday 1 November – are a good first step.

Recently, the ACT Government announced a plan to introduce measures to make life marginally better for people who rent. While there isn’t much detail yet, changes would include:

• A right to have pets,
• More rights to make minor modifications, &
• A requirement on landlords to justify excessive rent increases.

These changes are modest. All the same, property management types have pulled out the same tired playbook and argued that making renting fairer will bring about the end of times, returning all of humanity to a struggle for survival in which life is nasty, brutish, and short.

It has been a big week for rental campaigning in Australia:

• A Greens MP from Queensland has called for an end to unfair evictions and a 1% cap on rental increases.
• On Wednesday, the NSW Parliament passed changes to NSW tenancy law. The changes don’t go far enough, but they are something.
• In the ACT, a Greens MLA has proposed that certain minor modifications shouldn’t require landlord consent; a round of government reforms is expected in the next fortnight.
• And WA’s parliament is moving to keep children safe in rental properties.

Wow. You’d almost be forgiven for thinking that the balance has swung too far in the other direction.

Hahahahahahahhahaha. 

In Australia, the meaning of home is often linked to ownership. To make a home, we must first own it. But what if you don’t own your home? What if you rent? 

Better Renting made a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Environment and Communications, regarding "Treasury Laws Amendment (Improving the Energy Efficiency of Rental Properties) Bill 2018.

Our submission is available here. All submissions can be viewed and downloaded here. 

We've just launched a Facebook group for people who rent in Melbourne. You can join it at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/melbournerenters/

My older sister owns a house. Whenever I visit, I’m struck by how nice it is to own a home. She and her husband have made upgrades. They’ve started a garden. When they recently had a son, they could readily make modifications to make the house safer and more comfortable for their baby.

I have this yearning too – to be able to make a place my own. To have a home, to make it an expression of who I am, to put down roots in a community.

It’s not uncommon for people like me, who rent, to harbour such desires. In our current system, you’d be mad to want to be a renter forever. But is it ownership that renters are after? Or just decent homes?

Rental properties are ‘energy deficient’: the lack of energy efficiency places a burden on renters in the form of increased energy expenditure or harmful indoor temperatures. This report estimates the monetary value of this burden by calculating the worth of the thermal energy that energy deficient rental properties lack. Drawing upon six years of real estate data, we calculate the annual burden of energy deficiency in the ACT to be $39 million. The burden is particularly heavy for vulnerable renters, such as those on a low-income or living with disability. This analysis strengthens the arguments for minimum energy efficiency standards for rental properties.