• A peak tenants’ advocacy group has warned Victoria’s latest COVID-19 lockdown may grow the inequality gap between landlords and struggling tenants.
• Jennifer Beveridge, CEO of Tenants Victoria, said recent reforms to rental laws do not offer the same protections as now-abandoned eviction moratoriums and bans on rental increases.
• “People who rent are usually over represented in the casual workforce,” Beveridge said, raising concerns for renters left without JobKeeper and facing the risk of displacement.
• Visit Business Insider Australia’s homepage for more stories.

A peak tenants’ advocacy group has warned a “tale of two cities effect” could drive Victoria’s most vulnerable renters into further financial hardship, as the removal of temporary protections, another state-wide lockdown, and skyrocketing house prices pose new challenges to those locked out of home ownership.

Jennifer Beveridge, CEO of Tenants Victoria, said the state’s renters still face a myriad of challenges, despite the introduction of more than 130 rental reforms on March 29.

The reforms make it easier for renters to seek urgent repairs or make minor modifications to their home, like painting a wall or hammering in a picture frame. Landlords must also have reasonable grounds to deny pets on the premises.

More significant changes are also enshrined in the reforms. Rental providers can no longer provide ‘no specified reason’ as a reason for tenants to vacate, and the tweaks make it harder for landlords to evict over the late payment of rent.

“There are a lot of things that will be beneficial to renters,” Beveridge told Business Insider Australia. “And we can see that renters are starting to take advantage of those new rules.”

But those reforms came at the tail-end of the Victorian Government’s temporary moratorium on evictions and rental increases, designed to protect those whose incomes were wiped out by coronavirus lockdowns.

Advocates and community legal services predicted a wave of evictions once those measures, and Federal Government support measures like JobKeeper, came to an end in March.

With a new COVID-19 lockdown in place, and those eviction bans now defunct, Beveridge said Victorian tenants are once again at risk — while many landlords set to prosper from rising housing prices and existing financial security.

“If you’re impacted by COVID, financially, the new laws aren’t as good as the COVID emergency measures,” Beveridge said. “And so that’s where we’re seeing some of the fallout.”

“People who rent are usually over represented in the casual workforce, hospitality, arts, tourism, all of the things that we’re suddenly not allowed to do, fitness, and so on,” Beveridge added.

“So all of those things that are now shut… will impact people who don’t have an income, and who are probably still reeling from the effects of February lockdown, when there was JobKeeper.”

Hundreds of thousands of Victorians sought guidance on the new renting laws before the state’s latest lockdown.

A Consumer Affairs Victoria (CAV) spokesperson told Business Insider Australia that residential tenancy information has been accessed more than 420,000 times online since it went live in late March.

The number of inquiries about renting was 70% higher in April 2021 than the April average, the spokesperson said, with more queries still arriving en masse through May.

“In the week of 10-16 May 2021, CAV responded to 999 calls from tenants, 260 calls from rental providers and 336 calls from agents,” the spokesperson said.

Those figures comport with data from Tenants Victoria.

“We did see a spike in notice to vacate for rent arrears,” after March 29, Beveridge said. “We also saw a spike in calls about the renting increases.”

Beveridge also described a widespread “displacement effect” impacting some renters: as landlords slowly bump prices, move back into their properties, or increasingly re-list their homes as holiday accommodation, some tenants are being forced further afield.

While international border closures have suppressed rents for inner-Melbourne apartments, rents for properties outside of the city continue to heat up.

“Where do they go?” Beveridge said. “Do they move into more rural locations to find somewhere to rent, somewhere to live somewhere to make their home? We don’t have a lot of data on this. But we are getting a lot of these phone calls.”

Tenants Victoria is “putting forward some proposals” to the Victorian Government on further protections, she added.

But with the Victorian Government yet to revive eviction moratoriums through the latest lockdown, Beveridge remains wary of those seeking loopholes in a reform package designed to protect renters.

“I’m always surprised at the behaviour of some people and the disregard that they have for the laws,” she added.

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