Emily Hutchinson

1 Sep 2021

With the daily number of new COVID cases across the state hitting 120 on Wednesday and with emerging mystery cases, Premier Daniel Andrews confirmed that the current lockdown, which was due to end on Thursday 2 September, will be extended until at least 23 September.

Director of community engagement at Tenants Victoria, Farah Farouque, said recent announcements add to the concerns her organisation has for tenants who have been stood down from work and are struggling to pay rent, calling for a moratorium on evictions to be put in place.

“With the sixth pandemic lockdown extended and a new threat posed by the Delta variant, we are very concerned about the level of rent stress building in the community,” said Ms Farouque.

“People’s financial struggles have accelerated as a result of rolling public health lockdowns. Renters who’ve lost hours or been stood down from jobs have also now experienced three lockdowns without any direct tenancy protections.

“We urgently need more targeted support for them to mitigate the cumulative financial impact,” she said.

While many Victorians in office-based roles are working from home, those in other industries including hospitality, tourism, entertainment and retail have, in many cases, been stood down by their employers.

A nation-wide moratorium on evictions introduced last year ended in March, while in NSW, a 60-day moratorium on evictions was introduced last month. There has been no further moratorium announced in Victoria, however, the Victorian government insists that the rental reforms introduced in March 2021, would protect tenants from being evicted due to COVID.

“We’ve introduced more than 130 reforms to strengthen renters’ rights in March this year – meaning there was no gap in protections for renters once the eviction moratorium ended,” explained a government spokesperson.

“Under our new rental laws, a renter cannot be evicted unless the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) decides that it is reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances.

“We’ll continue to monitor the impacts on renters that are out of work because of this pandemic, or are doing the right thing and protecting all of us by following public health orders and as result temporarily can’t pay their rent,” the spokesperson said.

However, Ms Farouque said these laws were created without consideration of a health pandemic.

“Key amendments to the Residential Tenancies Act from the end of March were welcomed and improve Victorian renters’ rights broadly, but these laws were designed long before COVID-19 public health lockdowns and the resulting disruptions for many people’s incomes. With the Delta variant on the rise, we aren’t even approaching a COVID normal scenario.”

Some rental suburbs are struggling more than others

In a survey conducted by Tenants Victoria of 684 people in the wake of the fifth lockdown, 69% of respondents said they were financially impacted by lockdowns and more than half said they were struggling to pay rent.

The areas experiencing the greatest rent stress according to the survey were Greater Dandenong, Yarra, Hume, Frankston, Moreland, Melbourne, Brimbank, Maribyrnong, Glen Eira, Port Phillip and Darebin.

Melbourne-based property manager Sam Nokes of Jellis Craig – Stonnington said that some areas of Victoria have more struggling tenants than others this time around. Within the City of Stonnington, Mr Nokes said he and his team are yet to receive many requests from tenants for rent relief or incidences of landlords filing for eviction.

“As of today [25 August] rent arrears are at 4%…and that’s from an area that was heavily impacted last time,” he said referring to the local government area, which includes the popular rental suburbs of Prahran and Windsor.

Mr Nokes said a key reason for this could be the fact many renters haven’t returned to the market since they vacated during last year’s peak lockdown period.

“A lot of people would be making great savings at home with Mum and Dad and many have left the market as tenants and gone into buying. I also think a lot of those ‘hospo’ workers hadn’t actually committed to new leases yet.”

He added that many rent reductions had also been left in place by his landlord clientele who were more interested in keeping a tenant in their property at a reduced rate than trying to find a new one.