Abstract
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Australia was facing an incipient eviction crisis, the gravity of which had been obscured by inadequate data and the gradual mounting of systemic problems of unaffordability and insecurity. This article reviews the legal framework around tenancies and evictions and the sparse data it produces. Tribunal data obtained by the author shows that Australia’s two largest jurisdictions had, prior to the pandemic, a termination application rate somewhat more than half that of the US ‘crisis’ rate. The article concludes with directions for further research and reforms to address evictions in an enduring way, beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
In March 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated, governments and individuals around the world sought to slow the virus by suppressing economic activity – by staying home. Facing sudden, widespread reductions in incomes and mounting rental defaults, numerous governments also implemented eviction moratoriums to avoid worsening the dual economic and public health disaster. From April 2020, all Australian states and territories have restricted, to varying degrees, termination proceedings on the ground of rent arrears, and without grounds, where tenants are in COVID-19-related hardship, 1 and most have also implemented lesser restrictions for tenants more broadly, 2 and stopped rent increases. 3 At time of writing (December 2020), most jurisdictions have extended these restrictions into the new year. 4
Justified as an emergency response to a pending eviction crisis, the moratoriums may conceal another matter: even before COVID-19 emerged, there was already an eviction crisis in the making. In the United States (US) it had become common well before the pandemic to refer to an ‘eviction crisis’, a characterisation passing from policy advocacy to the legislature in the December 2019 tabling of a Bill for a federal ‘Eviction Crisis Act’. 5 This article argues that pre-pandemic Australia was also facing an incipient eviction crisis – on a rough measure, at about half the intensity of the US – but the gravity of this has been obscured: by inadequate data, by the more gradual way in which systemic problems of unaffordability and insecurity have been mounting for Australian renters, and now by the framing of the eviction moratoriums as an emergency response to a temporary crisis.
The private rental sector (PRS) houses about 27 per cent of Australian households; government- or community-owned social housing houses about four per cent. 6 As in other majority owner-occupier countries, such the US and the United Kingdom (UK), the PRS has been growing relative to other housing sectors, but the Australian trajectory has been different: whereas private rental in the US and UK has grown rapidly since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), here it has grown gradually since the late 1980s, climbing on a long escalation of house prices that merely paused, not crashed, around the GFC. 7 As in most other comparable countries, Australian social housing has been in decline for decades, though not been marked by demolitions on the scale experienced in the US and elsewhere.
Perhaps because it has not produced such dramatic turns of events as in the US, the Australian housing system and interrelated problems of unaffordability, insecurity and eviction have not spurred the same agitation. Australia has not had a best-selling ethnography of insecure housing like Evicted, 8 nor the equivalent of the innovative data repositories of the Eviction Lab 9 and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project 10 used to campaign against evictions. Australian housing advocates have sought to draw attention, such as through the Everyone’s Home campaign, to mounting problems of unaffordability and insecurity, for which there is a mass of academic research. But research focused on tenancy terminations and evictions is relatively thin, reflecting a paucity of quantitative data. There have been some studies of social housing terminations and evictions, in particular Martin et al, 11 which also yielded data about private sector tenancies that are discussed here for the first time. The last major research project to attempt an examination of evictions in both sectors was Beer et al, 12 conducted over 15 years ago and relying on a non-representative survey of evicted persons (n 150) rather than comprehensive administrative data from eviction proceedings.
This article makes its argument by examining the limited quantitative data on evictions in Australia, focusing on rent arrears and no-grounds terminations in the PRS and social housing. First, it is useful to review the law regarding tenancies and eviction in Australia, both for its substantive effects and its influence on data.
Australian tenancy laws and eviction: Before the moratoriums
Each Australian state and territory has its own residential tenancies legislation, 13 with numerous differences between jurisdictions, but all based on a broadly common model of mild consumer protection, market rents and ready but orderly termination. 14 Both private rental and social housing are covered, with some special provisions directed at ‘anti-social behaviour’ in social housing, but mostly alike. As a matter of policy, social housing landlords charge less-than-market rents, but the laws of all jurisdictions allow all landlords to charge rents according to the general market level. Most limit the frequency of rent increases, but none regulate for affordability.
Termination
Leaving aside the COVID-19 emergency provisions, all states and territories allow landlords to seek termination on prescribed grounds, such as non-payment of rent or another breach, or where the premises are sold with vacant possession. All also allow landlords to seek termination without grounds – but not during a tenancy’s fixed term and, as a matter of practice, fixed terms are kept short, to six or 12 months. 15 All allow ‘no-grounds’ termination at the end of a fixed term, although Victoria has legislated to allow this only at the end of the first fixed term; and all jurisdictions, except Tasmania (and Victoria, when its amendments commence), allow no-grounds termination where a tenancy continues past the fixed term. The specific grounds and notice periods vary between jurisdictions, and there are differences regarding the effect of the payment of arrears – ie, whether proceedings must cease or may continue – and of the frequency of non-payment.
Generally, the termination process begins with the landlord giving a termination notice; then, if the tenant does not vacate, the landlord may apply to the relevant tribunal (discussed below) for an order terminating the tenancy and returning possession to the landlord. All jurisdictions also allow termination applications direct to the tribunal in certain circumstances – typically urgent or serious ones. If the tribunal orders termination, the tenant must vacate within the time given; if they do not, the order may be enforced by authorised officers evicting the tenant. All jurisdictions prohibit self-help evictions and lockouts.
By international comparison, 16 Australian laws provide little security for tenants and are in tension with the right to housing recognised at international law, particularly Article 11(1) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). 17 As elaborated by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), this obliges States to ensure that rent increases are ‘in accordance with the principle of affordability’ and that evictions occur only after accessible legal proceedings to ‘ascertain that the measure in question is duly justified’, only as a ‘last resort’, and not to ‘render individuals homeless’. 18
Instead, Australia provides for ready but orderly termination. This legal framework also shapes what we know about terminations. In particular, it provides no accounting for termination notices or pre-tribunal terminations. These are the submerged parts of the ‘iceberg’ of evictions, necessarily larger and difficult to glimpse.
The tribunals
Termination applications in most jurisdictions proceed through the Civil and Administrative Tribunals, which are designed to be quicker, cheaper and less formal than courts. 19 To that end, the usual rules of evidence and rights to legal representation do not apply in tenancy proceedings. Landlords are generally entitled to be represented by property manager, while most tenants go unrepresented. Tenants advice services provide some representation, usually rationed to the most disadvantaged. 20
The tribunals deal with matters quickly: for example, in both NSW and Victoria, most are finalised within four weeks. 21 The tribunals publish high-level figures about caseload management, and some written decisions, but not detailed data about termination applications and outcomes.
Residential tenancy databases
The final aspect of the legal framework that has data implications is the regulation of residential tenancy databases (RTDs or, colloquially, tenant ‘blacklists’). RTDs are regulated under nationally consistent provisions in states and territories’ residential tenancies legislation, which restrict listings to where the tenancy is terminated and the tenant owes more than the bond, or where the tribunal has ordered termination for breach. Listings must be removed after three years, or sooner if the tribunal finds the listing unjust.
This amounts to a relatively strong regulation of the collection and use of information about individual tenants and tenancies – which is a good thing – but it means RTDs are not a comprehensive record of breaches, termination proceedings or evictions. 22
Evictions data
Published statistics about terminations and evictions in Australia are sparse. There is no accounting for landlords’ termination notices, or tenancies that end prior to tribunal proceedings, and no regularly published detailed tribunal data about termination applications and orders. There is no national databank such as the US Eviction Lab.
On request of the author, the NSW and Victorian tribunals, NCAT and VCAT, disclosed data about termination applications in those jurisdictions (which together are home to over half – 56 per cent – of Australian renter households). The periods covered are short (the NSW data cover 2016–17 and 2017–18; the Victorian data 2015–16, 2016–17 and 2017–18), so the analysis here is in terms of annual averages, rather than changes over time.
Table 1 presents the total annual average number of termination applications in NSW and Victoria, by all landlords across all categories of applications, and the rates of termination applications to tenancies in each state. At 3.2 per 100 tenancies in NSW and 3.8 per 100 tenancies in Victoria, these are a little more than half the rate of eviction filings for all of the US (6.12 per cent) reported by Eviction Lab. 23 Also shown are applications regarding ‘Breach – rent arrears’ – by far the largest category, at 81 per cent and 75 per cent of applications in each state respectively, and no-grounds applications.
Landlords’ termination applications (annual averages), NSW and Victoria.
Source: NCAT special data request; VCAT special data request; ABS;24 AIHW.25
Table 2 breaks down termination applications by landlord types. 26 The states’ public housing landlords are relatively heavy users of termination proceedings, applying at an annual average rate of five applications per 100 public housing tenancies in NSW and 8.7 applications per 100 public housing tenancies in Victoria. NSW’s other social housing landlords (community housing providers and Indigenous housing organisations) had a higher rate still: 10 termination applications per 100 tenancies.
Termination applications, and applications per 100 tenancies (annual averages), by sector, NSW and Victoria.
Note: figure in parentheses is termination applications per 100 tenancies of the relevant landlord type.
Source: NCAT special data request; VCAT special data request; ABS;27 AIHW.28
With significant qualifications, the NCAT data also shows some outcomes of termination applications (no Victorian outcomes data were provided). At least 6339 applications (annual average) resulted in termination orders, representing 25 per cent of termination applications, and the number may be significantly higher. 29 The NSW public housing landlord averaged 614 termination outcomes per annum (11 per cent of its applications); other social housing landlords averaged 492 per annum (15 per cent); while other (private sector) landlords averaged 5233 (31 per cent).
There are, to reiterate, significant limitations on these data. We do not know, on the one hand, about the necessarily larger number of termination notices given, nor do we have a clear enough view as to how many of the different types of termination applications resulted in termination orders, or in actually effected evictions. The data does, however, indicate the scale of activity at a crucial stage in the termination process by PRS landlords and social housing landlords.
Rent arrears and rental stress
The tribunal data shows clearly that PRS and social housing termination applications predominantly relate to rent arrears, but not the extent to which this is a matter of wilful, agentive non-payment, or the result of systemic housing affordability problems beyond the influence of individual tenants.
Circumstantial evidence from other data sources weighs in favour of the latter. The ABS Housing Costs and Occupancy data shows about half of PRS households in 2017–18 were ‘low-income’: just over 1 million households, with 305,000 in NSW and 257,000 in Victoria. 30 Two-thirds of these households paid more than 30 per cent of their income in rent, with a quarter paying more than 50 per cent. 31 Almost half (47 per cent) had less than $500 per week left after paying rent and 18 per cent had less than $250 per week left. 32 Thirty per cent of all low-income private renters did not have $500 saved. 33 The proximity of these financially strained and precarious households to being unable to pay rent when due, and hence to eviction proceedings, was implicitly acknowledged in the implementation of the COVID-19 eviction moratoriums, when employment and incomes suddenly dropped in the early days of the pandemic.
It may seem that rent arrears in social housing cannot be explained as a result of rental stress as it is in the PRS, because social housing rents are set at not more than 25 to 30 per cent of each household’s (low) income, so they are affordable according to the conventional benchmark. 34 Alternatively, the fact of social housing arrears might indicate a problem with defining affordability as a ratio of household income. This argument is made by Burke et al who calculate that even rents at 25 per cent of income leave almost two-thirds of social housing households with insufficient money for a minimum level of consumption (according to a Low-Cost Budget Standard). 35
Further circumstantial evidence comes from data about homelessness. As a headline measure of how a housing system is performing its most basic function, Australia failed to house 116,000 persons at the 2016 Census (up 14 per cent in five years); 37,700 in NSW (up 27 per cent); and 24,800 in Victoria (up 10 per cent). 36 The specific contribution of rental sector failure is indicated by data from specialist homelessness services (SHS), which assisted 290,000 persons in 2018–19 (Table 3). ‘Housing crisis’ is the second most common reason given (after domestic violence) for seeking SHS assistance (80,000 clients in 2018–19), while ‘accommodation’ and ‘assistance to sustain a tenancy or prevent tenancy failure or eviction’ are the first and second most common needs (respectively 169,000 and 98,000 cases in 2018–19). 37
Specialist homelessness service cases: ‘housing crisis’ and assistance to prevent eviction.
Source: AIHW.38
Although the numbers are similar, there is no certain relationship between SHS cases and termination proceedings through the tribunals. However, between the hundreds of thousands of households in rental stress and the tens of thousands of cases of assistance at SHSs, the 38,000 rent arrears termination proceedings each year in NSW and Victoria appear to fit. In this way they fill in more of the picture of the PRS as a sector of mounting systemic pressures and individual crises, with fewer households finding relief in the social housing sector, which itself imposes what are effectively hardship rents on many.
No-grounds terminations and the insecurity of the PRS
No-grounds terminations are far outnumbered by rent arrears terminations in the tribunal data, but there are reasons for thinking that they have significant damaging impacts on the security of tenants.
The first thing to note about the legal construction of Australia’s no-grounds termination provisions is that such provisions are built strong: not much voids or overcomes no-grounds proceedings. All jurisdictions allow the tribunal to dismiss no-grounds proceedings where they are retaliation for the tenant asserting their rights – but the onus of proof is on the tenant and, in some jurisdictions, the tenant must themselves apply to the tribunal to make this defence. There is also WA’s authority for no-grounds proceedings not being retaliatory where taken in response to a tenant defending with-grounds proceedings. 39
Aside from retaliation, no other considerations are allowed in NSW, Queensland, SA and WA: without-grounds termination proceedings will result in the termination of the tenancy, without regard to any other factors or circumstances, and the tribunal’s discretion is confined to setting the date for possession. In these jurisdictions, no-grounds termination notices are virtually a trump card. 40
Lack of discretion to decline arguably makes the ‘iceberg’ of terminations prior to tribunal proceedings larger for without-grounds terminations than for other types of termination, because there is really nothing for tenants to do but vacate. Even more extensive is the chilling effect of no-grounds termination on tenants asserting their rights: in a survey by advocacy organisations, 44 per cent of tenants stated that they were ‘concerned that [a request for repairs] could get them evicted’. 41
Conclusion: Directions for research and reform
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, landlords in Australia’s two most populous states were applying for termination orders at somewhat more than half the rate recorded in the US ‘eviction crisis’. Considering also the evidence about deepening rental unaffordability and homelessness, and the impacts of no-grounds terminations and insecurity in the PRS, there is cause for Australian researchers and policymakers to pay greater attention to evictions as a specific and enduring housing policy problem. Having temporarily restricted termination proceedings as an emergency measure, states and territories should use the time to devise a longer-term strategy against evictions.
Substantively, states and territories could permanently adopt some of the elements of the moratoriums. The turn away from no-grounds termination – which are in some degree suspended in Tasmania, Queensland, WA and Victoria – could be made permanent, with provision for termination on prescribed, just grounds only. This would be consistent with the UN CESCR statement that eviction should always be justified. Jurisdictions could also maintain increased scrutiny of proceedings and affordance of discretion to tribunals, particularly with directions to consider the need to avoid homelessness (as in NSW and SA), applying the UN CESCR principle that eviction is the last resort. The emergency measures also indicate the potential for a stronger regulatory role regarding rents, and there are numerous international examples of rent regulations that seek to moderate market outcomes, rather than wholly determine rents, which could be emulated in Australia. For example, the caps on increases in ‘rent pressure zones’, as in Ireland and Scotland, or Germany’s system of limiting increases by reference to a ‘moving anchor’ that averages increases to new and existing rents over a period of years. 42
There are also actions regarding data transparency and assistance to tenants that could be taken – focus areas of the US Eviction Crisis Bill. The Australian tribunals remain a largely untapped wealth of data about termination applications, orders and evictions, including where they are occurring, by which landlords, on what grounds and for what amounts of money, and whether they involve repeat proceedings. Comprehensive datasets of terminations and other applications (with individual tenants deidentified) should be available to researchers. For data about the ‘iceberg’ of proceedings prior to the tribunal stage, landlords could be required to report annually the number of notices given and tenancies terminated. The process for releasing tenants’ bonds could also be used to generate data about tenancy terminations, by adding a few survey questions to the claim form. At the suggestion of the Tenants’ Union of NSW, the NSW government has recently commenced a survey of this kind. Australian researchers and policymakers need not look to RTDs for data, and Australian jurisdictions should maintain their currently strong regulation of tenancy data collection and use.
Governments can also enhance the SHSs and the tenants’ advice services already engaged in eviction prevention. In particular, Australian jurisdictions could adopt the principle of the Right to Counsel programs currently rolling out in some major US cities, and resource tenants’ advice services to the extent necessary to offer representation to all tenants in termination proceedings. 43
Beyond these measures, unaffordability and insecurity in the rental sector must be addressed through a comprehensive housing policy that demarginalises and grows the social housing sector to provide more genuinely affordable, secure housing. That call has long been made in Australian housing advocacy: a focus on terminations and evictions – among the most destabilising, traumatic and yet obscure aspects of our housing system’s failings – may give it a new urgency. There should be no going back, after COVID-19, to legal and policy settings that were cultivating a crisis.
Supplemental Material
sj-pdf-1-alj-10.1177_1037969X21990940 - Supplemental material for Australia’s incipient eviction crisis: No going back
Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-alj-10.1177_1037969X21990940 for Australia’s incipient eviction crisis: No going back by Chris Martin in Alternative Law Journal
Footnotes
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
This article draws on research funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (71163).
1
For COVID-19-hardship cases, rent arrears terminations are stopped in South Australia (COVID-19 Emergency Response Act 2020 (SA)); Tasmania (COVID-19 Disease Emergency (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2020 (Tas)); Victoria (Residential Tenancies Act 1998 (Vic), as amended by COVID-19 Omnibus (Emergency Measures) Act 2020 (Vic)); Western Australia (Residential Tenancies (COVID-19 Response) Act 2020 (WA)); and the ACT (Residential Tenancies (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Declaration 2020 (ACT)). Rent arrears terminations are subject to increased notice requirements and scrutiny by the tribunal in New South Wales (Residential Tenancies Regulation 2019 (NSW) as amended by Residential Tenancies Amendment (COVID-19) Regulation 2020 (NSW)); Queensland (Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation (COVID-19 Emergency Response) Regulation 2020 (Qld); and the NT (Modification Notice, Northern Territory, Government Gazette, No S28, 28 April 2020). Also for COVID-19 hardship cases, no-grounds terminations are stopped in Queensland, Tasmania, Victoria and WA; and are subject to increased notice requirements and scrutiny by the tribunal in NSW and the NT, and increased scrutiny (only) in South Australia, including consideration of the objective of avoiding homelessness. For more detailed examinations of the COVID-19 emergency measures see Chris Martin, ‘Australian Residential Tenancies Law in the COVID-19 Emergency: Considerations of housing and property rights’ (forthcoming) UNSW Law Journal, and Hal Pawson et al, ‘COVID-19 Rental Housing and Homelessness Policy Impacts’ (Report, UNSW-ACOSS Poverty and Inequality Partnership, forthcoming).
2
For tenants broadly, most grounds for termination are stopped or subject to greater procedural scrutiny in Tasmania, WA and Victoria; in NSW, some grounds for termination were subject to longer notice periods.
3
South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, WA stopped rent increases for all tenancies; ACT stopped rent increases for hardship cases.
4
To 31 January 2021 for Tasmania and the ACT; 6 February 2021 for SA; 23 March 2021 for the NT, 26 March 2021 for NSW; 28 March 2021 for Victoria and WA. Queensland allowed its restrictions to expire 29 September 2020.
5
Eviction Crisis Act of 2019, S 3030, 116th Congress (2019).
7
Chris Martin, Kath Hulse and Hal Pawson, ‘The changing institutional of private rental housing: an international review’ (AHURI Final Report No 292, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, January 2018) 49–55.
8
Matthew Desmond, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City (Penguin Books, 2016).
11
Chris Martin et al, ‘Social housing legal responses to crime and anti-social behaviour: Impacts on vulnerable families’ (AHURI Final Report No 314, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, June 2019).
12
Andrew Beer et al, ‘Evictions and housing management’ (AHURI Final Report No 94, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, June 2006).
13
Residential Tenancies Act 2010 (NSW); Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008 (Qld); Residential Tenancies Act 1995 (SA); Residential Tenancy Act 1997 (Tas); Residential Tenancies Act 1998 (Vic); Residential Tenancies Act 1987 (WA); Residential Tenancies Act 1997 (ACT); Residential Tenancies Act (NT).
14
Martin et al (n 11) 25–35; Adrian J Bradbrook, ‘Rented Housing Law: Past, present and future’ (2003) 7(1) Flinders Journal of Law Reform 1.
15
Termination on the ground of sale with vacant possession is also generally not allowed during a fixed term; similarly, rent increases during fixed terms are not allowed, with limited exceptions. The NSW public housing landlord grants tenancies on relatively long fixed terms (2, 5 or 10 years), but also has access to additional grounds for termination.
16
Martin, Hulse and Pawson (n 7); Kath Hulse, Vivienne Milligan and Hazel Easthope, ‘Secure occupancy in rental housing: Conceptual foundations and comparative perspectives’ (AHURI Final Report No 170, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, July 2011).
17
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, opened for signature 16 December 1966, 993 UNTS 3 (entered into force 3 January 1976).
18
UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General Comment No 4: The Right to Adequate Housing (Art 11(1) of the Covenant), 6th session, UN Doc E/1992/23 (13 December 1991) [8]; UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Views: Communication No 5/2015, 61st session, UN Doc E/C.12/61/D/5/2015 (20 June 2017) [15.1] (Djazia and Bellili v Spain). See also the discussion by Padraic Kenna, ‘Introduction’, in Padraic Kenna et al (eds), Loss of Homes and Evictions across Europe: A comparative legal and policy examination (Edward Elgar, 2018) 1, 27–9.
19
In Tasmania and WA, the Magistrates Courts deal with tenancy matters, operating in a similar mode to such tribunals.
20
21
NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT), Annual Report 2018–19 (Report, 2019) 84; Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), Annual Report 2018–19 (Report, 2019) 57.
22
For a brief period, one RTD operator compiled a database of tenants who were party to tribunal proceedings, by scraping the hearing lists published daily online by NCAT, but it ceased when an investigation was commenced into whether these were unlawful listings.
24
Australian Bureau of Statistics (n 6).
25
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Housing assistance in Australia 2018 (Report, AIHW).
26
Note the VCAT data, unlike those from NCAT, count community and Indigenous housing providers with private sector landlords in ‘other landlords’.
27
Australian Bureau of Statistics (n 6).
28
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (n 25).
29
The number of termination orders may be higher because NCAT’s database records only one type of order for each application finalised, and for 10,519 of them the order entered is ‘ex parte hearing’ rather than the substantive outcome of the application so heard. The outcomes data do not break down outcomes by category of application.
30
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Housing Occupancy and Costs (Catalogue No 4130.0, 25 July 2019). Low income households are in the bottom 40 per cent of households by equivalised disposable income.
31
Productivity Commission, ‘Vulnerable Private Renters: Evidence and options’ (Research paper, Productivity Commission, 25 September 2019) 5.
32
Ibid 54.
33
Ibid.
34
98 per cent of social housing households are low-income: Productivity Commission, ‘Report on Government Services 2019’ (Report, 23 January 2020), Table 18A.21. Income-related rent rates vary slightly because different categories of income are subject to different rates.
35
Terry Burke, Michael Stone and Liss Ralston, ‘The Residual Income Method: A new lens on housing affordability and market behaviour’ (AHURI Final Report No 176, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, October 2011) 21.
36
Australian Bureau of Statistics, Census of Population and Housing: Estimating homelessness, 2016 (Catalogue No 2049.0). Hal Pawson et al, Australian Homelessness Monitor 2018 (Report, Launch Housing) 9.
37
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, ‘Specialist Homelessness Services 2018–19’ (Report, 18 December 2019).
38
Ibid.
39
Re Magistrate Steven Malley; ex parte the Housing Authority [2017] WASC 193.
40
Tasmania was in this group, but in Parsons v Director of Housing [2018] TASSC 62 its Supreme Court held that magistrates can decline without-grounds termination where the landlord’s reasons are not ‘genuine and just’; so was Victoria, but in the narrow class of without-grounds proceedings remaining under its amendments the tribunal may decline termination where it is not ‘reasonable and proportionate’ (new section 330A).
41
CHOICE, National Shelter and the National Association of Tenant Organisations, Disrupted: The consumer experience of renting in Australia (Report, October 2018) 7.
42
Martin, Hulse and Pawson (n 7) 49–51.
43
Ericka Petersen, ‘Building a House for Gideon: The right to counsel in evictions’ (2020) 16 Stanford Journal of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties 63.
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