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The two key fixes for renters not included in Qld’s fresh reform round
By Matt Dennien
They’re the two most significant things that could be done to benefit Queensland renters, according to the two groups advocating for the growing cohort.
And despite years of pushing, neither of the measures show up in the government’s latest round of tenancy law reforms working its way through parliament.
In 2018, the Queensland government opened its doors to public consultation on rental reform to create a “better renting future” for all.Credit: Peter Rae
They’re also widely rejected nationwide by those lobbying on behalf of the other side, property owners and managers, largely looking to fix things with more housing.
There are a number of other proposed bills also before parliament, and work being done under the state’s housing plan, on that front after Brisbane rents jumped another 18 per cent to a new record high in the last year.
(Along with concern about the construction sector’s capacity to deliver what’s needed for growing populations and to help take the sting out of rent and property sale prices).
While a broad freezing of rents where they are has been largely dismissed as unlikely to help and left to the Greens to continue pushing, renter advocates instead point to rent hike caps and eviction protections existing in a patchwork across the country.
These would limit rent increases to an annual jump of no more than inflation, and ensure renters could only be evicted for breaching terms of their lease or for reasons such as the owner wanting to move in, demolish the home, or do extensive repairs or renovations.
Appearing before a parliamentary examination of the proposed Queensland reforms, Tenants Queensland chief executive Penny Carr said these were needed to “take the fear out of renting”.
“While they [renters] can have their tenancies ended by either unreasonable rent increases, or just simply because the end of the fixed term is coming up, they are fearful about their other rights and enforcing them,” Carr said.
Q Shelter executive director Fiona Caniglia, whose organisation is also arguing for the rent cap and eviction measures to be rolled into the proposed changes, sat beside Carr at Monday’s hearing.
Caniglia said arguments about stronger protections and greater fairness for renters being a negative for investor confidence highlighted the systemic challenge around the private housing market.
That is, much of the way it is set up to house about a third of the population is built on individuals owning one or a few homes, often with tight budgets and rising costs themselves.
But this is also an “incredible power imbalance” Caniglia said, because renters are in an even worse position often not underpinned by an ongoing increase in the worth of the property or other assets.
“It really is a house of cards, it’s not structurally right,” Caniglia said. “We do need I think to embrace reforms that take us towards more institutional investing in rental homes.”
While the vocal Real Estate Institute of Queensland has made its opposition to both rent caps and changes to eviction grounds clear, its counterpart in the ACT appears more measured.
Even in the territory, where some caps on rent increases have existed since 2019 and recent changes have more genuinely banned no-grounds evictions, warnings of investors fleeing didn’t eventuate.
(Research has also disputed such claims, which also rarely explain where the properties go if landlords sell-up: those more willing to accept the conditions, or first-home buyers).
Meanwhile, in a big couple weeks for housing news, rents and property prices continued their upward march – helping lift inflation and hose-down hopes of interest rate cuts.
And the federal government finally showed their hand and took the long-simmering question of using the Pinkenba quarantine facility to help with housing pressures off the table.
Not to mention a new push from the Greens into the idea of limiting the reasons tenants can be evicted (reframed as the “guaranteed right to a lease renewal”) and LNP Opposition Leader David Crisafulli arguing Labor was “at war with landlords”.
The government is certainly aware of the simmering issue, but remains wary of moving too far or too fast while stuck between property owners and their backers on one side and renters on the other with theirs.
Parts of the bill to clamp down on rent bidding have been put forward with the aim to “help stabilise” the private rental market.
It’s unclear just how much impact this will have, but the REIQ have dismissed the need and labelled it “rent control” to evoke measures like caps or freezes.
But beyond broad-stroke “affordable housing initiatives”, previously secret state government surveys showed 41 per cent of residents put rent control as their second pick for a housing fix.
With a state election looming in less than six months, and a federal one to follow, will renters and those wanting a fairer housing system think building more houses alone is enough?