By Megan Gorrey and Michael McGowan
Premier Chris Minns says Labor’s policy of appointing a rental commissioner will help rebalance the housing market for tenants amid calls for NSW to introduce a better mechanism for managing huge hikes.
The plight of tenants in an eastern Sydney apartment block, where proposed rents have increased by up to 70 per cent a week, has again highlighted the predicament faced by renters across the city as interest rates climb, supply diminishes and demand soars.
Premier Chris Minns has ruled out a cap on rent increases, but promised major efforts to increase housing supply.Credit: Janie Barrett
Minns has dashed tenants’ hopes for immediate relief by ruling out a cap on rent rises, but pledged major efforts to increase housing supply to ease price pressures in the long term.
Labor has also promised to introduce a rental commissioner charged with guiding the new government’s reforms to the sector, as well as identifying barriers to increasing housing supply.
However, Minns could not say when that role would be filled when asked on Tuesday.
“I don’t have a date for you,” he said.
“We know that the pressures on the rental market are extreme [but] the rental commissioner needs to be open to tender. We need to go to the marketplace and see who’s available to fill that important position.
“We believe it will make a significant impact in terms of rebalancing the marketplace, particularly as it relates to renters, and we have to have that concern.”
Tenants Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said the number of renters seeking advice from the advocacy group about negotiating or challenging rent hikes had tripled in the past year.
“The biggest rental increase we’ve seen in the past six months was a near-doubling from about $1000 a week to $1700 a week in the North Shore area. [That is] the extreme end.”
Patterson Ross said rental increases were “not protected or regulated particularly strongly in NSW”, and there was a lack of data measuring changes to rents, particularly those inside a tenancy.
Renters in NSW are facing an unprecedented squeeze due to rising rents and limited housing supply.Credit: Ben Rushton
He suggested a system of registering rent increases with a central body, similar to the Rental Bond Board, would give tenants greater transparency and provide a much better idea of shifting rents.
Shelter NSW acting chief executive Cathy Callaghan said plans to end no grounds evictions in NSW for renters on rolling leases, which has bipartisan support, would “take some heat out of the market”. But she said it would be reasonable for authorities to consider a better method for managing rent rises.
“There are a few mechanisms in NSW, but there’s nothing keeping a lid on what seems to be some pretty outrageous increases.
Callaghan said a rental cap similar to the ACT’s, which limits rent increases to 110 per cent of inflation as measured by the consumer price index, was “not an outrageous model” for NSW.
“It still gives good landlords the opportunity to recalibrate their rents if their costs have gone through the roof, so I think that’s reasonable,” Callaghan said.
Minns has refused to countenance an ACT-style cap on rental increases because of concerns it would affect the state’s lagging housing supply pipeline.
“I’m not considering that policy change primarily because I think it would have a detrimental effect on supply, and in the long run supply is going to be fundamental to fixing the rental and housing crisis in NSW,” he said on Tuesday.
Greens housing spokeswoman Jenny Leong plans to introduce a bill on the first day of the new parliament to freeze rents for two years. She also wants the government to consider expanding access to existing rental programs and subsidies for tenants.
Leong said the fact some tenants were forced to challenge large rent increases in the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal was “part of the demonstration of how broken the system is”.
“You could turn around the power imbalance by requiring landlords to have to prove to the tribunal why they should be able to raise the rent, rather than a tenant having to challenge that increase,” she said.
“That would be a zero-cost, easy solution that could be implemented almost immediately.”
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