The number of renters receiving termination notices from landlords due to properties being deemed “uninhabitable” is on the rise, a tenant advocacy says.
NSW Tenants Union spokesperson Leo Patterson Ross said the number of people who had contacted the union over rental properties being suddenly deemed uninhabitable had doubled over the past year.
“One of the risks of complaining about the condition of a rental property is that tenants open themselves up to being slapped with an ‘uninhabitable’ termination notice or no-grounds eviction,” Patterson Ross said.
Oatley mother-of-two Sophie Eldridge was elated when she first moved into a freshly painted two-bedroom rental with her family in 2019.
Sophie Eldridge’s family was evicted from their Oatley rental with little notice after they complained about mould and damage.Credit: Rhett Wyman
It was within their budget and was the only available rental in the zone where they wanted to send their five-year-old to primary school.
But during the tenancy, Eldridge contacted their real estate agent about a number of needed repairs including a possum infestation in their roof, a broken stove, a broken air conditioner, mould and a broken shower washer.
After making another request for a permanent fix for the mould, the Eldridges received a termination notice in the mail on December 17, 2020, with a three-week grace period.
“By that point, I was furious. My children were sick with mould poisoning, their eyes and noses constantly dripping,” she said.
“They responded by evicting us the week before Christmas with no apology nor assistance from the agent to find a new place.”
In NSW, there is an obligation for landlords to abide by a set of minimum housing standards, but the obligation only begins when a tenancy contract is signed, not when their property is advertised. There is no regulation preventing landlords from relisting a property for rent directly after ending an existing lease agreement because it is uninhabitable.
When former Paddington housemates Joanna Sellar and Gabrielle Scullin began their tenancy in August 2020 a neighbour warned them of a “serious leak” in the roof.
Sellar said they would have vacated the first time it leaked, just three months later, if they hadn’t been so worried about their rental reference and had known their rights.
They spent more than a year requesting the repairs to the roof until, one rainy afternoon in April, they received a lease termination notice, informing them they had to vacate the property immediately because it had been deemed “uninhabitable”.
“After two years of ignoring our requests for the roof to be permanently fixed they used it as a tool to get rid of us minutes before business hours closed on a random Friday,” Scullin said.
NSW Fair Trading received 69 complaints from tenants about termination notices in the 12 months to June 30, 2022.
This included 17 complaints about a no-grounds termination notice and 18 complaints about a termination notice on “other grounds”, such as a breach or dispute about a rental agreement.
Other complaints included rental arrears, excessive rent increases, the property being sold or the premises being uninhabitable due to mould or water penetration.
Of the 69 complaints, 15 tenants were offered and accepted redress. A further 24 were provided with options to resolve the matter.
A recent report from the NSW Tenants Union said up to 30 per cent of the state’s tenants will experience eviction.
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