It's time we apply some heat on landlords

Over the past year I have been collecting stories from renters about the health impacts that extreme temperatures have in their rental homes.

There are some horrifying stories, ranging from people passing out on multiple occasions due to the heat inside their homes, to people with disabilities not being able to perform routine daily tasks due to the indoor temperature moving beyond recommended safe levels.

I am concerned about the lack of forward planning to prevent people dying or getting sick in their homes. Heatwaves are predicted to become the leading cause of death in Queensland this century.

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) recently reported that heat was the leading cause of extreme weather related death, far greater than deaths from bushfires, floods or storms combined.

We are familiar with the minimum standards to have smoke alarms in our homes and this is something that all rental properties must have to be compliant, but what about ceiling insulation to help prevent a home from heating up like an oven when the sun hits the roof, making it hotter inside than out?

Whilst the ACT has some minimum standards for ceiling insulation and Victoria have announced consultation on bringing in a standard, this still leaves little reprieve for renters currently sweating it out in temperatures that are well above safe levels for a dwelling.

In most areas of life, as Australians we expect quality assurances as consumers, and for there to be checks and balances for our safety.

For example, if I purchase food I have recourse if it makes me sick, or if before I eat it, I notice that it's spoiled in some way (beyond my forgetting it in the back of the fridge) then I can ask for my money back. No such luck if your home makes you unwell!

We deserve better, consistent regulation of the condition of housing that is deemed as rentable.

Tenant protections are needed to improve the standards of energy efficiency to not only improve the lives of renters, but also the strain on the environment.

Energy-efficient homes are more resilient to climate extremes and use less energy, an easy double win for climate resilience and emissions reduction.

We are all familiar with the energy rating on our appliances, but Australia doesn't even have mandatory disclosure of the energy rating of our homes. Australian governments need to start acting now to catch up with European housing standards and implement mandatory energy-efficiency minimum standards and disclosure.

The lack of standards is even more confronting when you think about how much renters are paying. For example, Tenants Qld reported in August that their clients' rent had been rising on average almost 25 per cent and about a third of their clients had a rent increase of 50 per cent or higher.

It is often suggested that regulation impacts both rental prices and leads to property investors leaving the market, reducing rental housing availability. Research published by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute in November 2022 however, found little evidence that residential tenancy law has impacted investment in private rental housing.

READ MORE:

This argument should clearly be removed from the narrative unless evidence is provided. As AHURI concludes, "the agenda should centre housing rights and reject the disinvestment threat: if landlords were to leave the sector because they cannot meet standards, it is a good outcome"; it may create a low-cost home for home ownership for someone else to invest the labor to improve its condition.

I'm hoping that renters can have a happy new year, but that depends on our legislators to keep making policy reform. When the percentage of landlords in parliament is so much higher than the ratio of the rest of Australia, I fear that it's the property investors who are going to continue to be the happiest about the rental situation in Australia in 2024.