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Skyrocketing rents ‘forcing families out onto the streets’, says Qld lawyer
The Queensland government is being urged to impose a cap on rent increases to deter predatory landlords and real estate agents from gouging vulnerable tenants.
Jess Feyder
Bruce Simmonds, litigation director of Gold Coast firm Parker Simmonds Solicitors & Lawyers, said it’s time for Queensland legislators to step up and address what’s becoming a humanitarian crisis, as more families are forced out onto the streets.
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More and more rental tenants are being priced out of their homes by skyrocketing rents, he argued, with media headlines showing rental tenants copping $100 a week rent rises and given mere days to accept or be made homeless.
Median rents, Mr Simmonds continued, have reportedly skyrocketed to five-year record highs across much of Queensland, and with no legal cap on rent raises, landlords and rental agents are exploiting the loophole.
“I’ve had calls from people desperate to know their legal options because of the volatile rental market,” said Mr Simmonds. “The tragedy from a legal perspective is that tenants have few protections.”
Under the Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Act 2008, landlords can only raise rent prices if at least six months has passed since the last increase, for both periodic and fixed-term agreements. Tenants on periodic agreements have to be given two months' notice of an increase by the landlord.
“But there is nothing in the act that specifies how much rent can be increased by, and the Queensland government does not intend to change that rule despite increasing calls for caps to be placed on rent rises,” said Mr Simmonds.
Media reports quoted a spokesman from Queensland’s Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy, who said that placing a cap on rent increases could pose a risk to Queensland’s rental “supply and affordability” — a notion Mr Simmonds rejected.
They are “weasel words which ignore the human cost of predatory landlords and rental agents effectively given state government approval to charge whatever rent increase they like”, said Mr Simmonds
“It’s gouging, plain and simple and any respect for common decency is ignored as more tenants are forced to live in their cars because they have been priced out of their homes,” he said.
“The Queensland government should be ashamed of itself for refusing to address the rental crisis, while wasting more than $220 million setting up and running the 1000 bed Wellcamp quarantine facility on the Darling Downs that is now being mothballed after minimal use.
“Surely this could be re-purposed in some way to help those forced on to the streets by rent rises?
“If the state government won’t address the rental hike scandal, perhaps it needs the federal government to step in and overrule them?
“Common decency demands that someone act on behalf of those being made homeless by unrestrained rent rises.
“The state was willing to spend untold millions of dollars for unused hotel rooms for COVID quarantine purposes, yet they do nothing when Queenslanders are forced on to the streets because of outrageous rent increases.”
Mr Simmonds said the Queensland government has badly failed its people, “rather than spending billions on the ego-stoking 2032 Olympic Games in Brisbane, it should be spending time and money right now to ensure all Queenslanders have access to an affordable home”.
