Campaigns
Tenants Victoria’s campaigns work towards making renting fair, secure and dignified for renters.
Make Renting Fair
The Make Renting Fair campaign founded by Tenants Victoria in 2017 advocates for the safety, stability and privacy of Victoria’s renters. Bringing together more than 10,000 individuals and 70 organisations, it helped achieve the first major changes to rental laws in 20 years.
Victoria’s new rental laws, the Residential Tenancies Amendment Act, 2018, are a credit to the campaign, the growing influence of renters and the changing nature of housing. Rather than being a temporary arrangement, renting is now a long-term or permanent form of housing for many of us.
Big reforms in the new laws include:
- abolishing ‘no reason’ notices to vacate
- introducing minimum property standards that address health and safety concerns
- allowing renters to undertake some minor modifications
- making it easier to rent with pets
- new protections for victims of family violence
When the laws are fully implemented, the 600,000-plus households in Victoria in rented homes will have the strongest protections in the country.
Tenants Victoria’s job now is to work in partnership with the Victorian Government to bring the voices of renters into policy decisions and make sure these new laws live up to their promise.
Make Social Housing Work
Sustained investment in social housing — rental housing owned and run by the government or not-for-profit agencies — is needed to help solve Victoria’s shortage of affordable housing.
Tenants Victoria welcomed the Victorian Government’s plan in May 2020 to undertake what The Age newspaper described as ‘the biggest spend on social housing since the global financial crisis’ [The Age, May 17, 2020]. Yet more needs to be done.
With other organisations in the Housing Peaks Alliance we are part of the Make Social Housing Work campaign to boost social housing as a proportion of all Victorian households to the national average of 4.5 per cent. Victoria is currently falling behind, with social housing as a proportion of all housing at just 3.2 per cent.
The Housing Peaks Alliance is calling on the Victorian Government to develop a 10-year social housing plan.