Perth Voice Interactive

KATE DAVIS is a lecturer at the Murdoch University School of Law and Criminology and was previously Principal Solicitor at Tenancy WA (community legal centre for tenants). She is completing a PhD, “Is it lawful to evict children to homelessness from public housing in WA?”. Kate is a member of the Greens WA. 

THE minister’s recent Letter to the Editor about evictions from public housing is riddled with disinformation.  

The minister likes to count “bailiff evictions” and hide the rest. 

The Housing Authority can terminate tenancies three ways –  tenants might leave after a Termination Notice, or after the Magistrates Court orders them to leave, or when the bailiff changes the locks. 

These are all evictions – and to claim that tenants “voluntarily vacate” after an order from the Magistrates Court or a termination notice from the government is nonsense.  

As independent candidate Kate Hulett correctly called out – rather than ‘bailiff evictions’ numbering in the 40s, in fact the Housing Authority evicts hundreds of households every year (256, 217 and 240 households evicted in the last three financial years). 

That’s over 1000 people evicted from public housing in the last two years. 

These are the Housing Authority’s own figures, on the public record thanks to persistent questions in Parliament from Greens MP Brad Pettitt. 

The most alarming figure, again the Housing Authority’s own numbers, is that over 3000 children have been evicted from public housing during this government. 

A total of 3451 children have been evicted from public housing since July 2016. 

It is true that during minister Carey’s time the Housing Authority has evicted less children each year – 193 in the last year – down from the shocking peaks of 809 children evicted in 2016-17, 627 in 2017-18 and 787 in 2018-19.  

Evictions

Public housing is housing of last resort, and these are overwhelmingly evictions to homelessness. 

This is not a ‘wicked problem’ without any solution. 

The community service sector has been writing to the minister and department for years and years, proposing support services to prevent evictions by helping people to sustain their tenancies well. In my experience – and I’ve been representing public housing tenants for 10 years – families evicted from public housing are dealing with a lot of challenges – intergenerational trauma, poor mental health, overcrowding (due to the government’s failure to provide enough public housing), family violence and poverty. 

Often these tenants are supporting family members in crisis. 

Eviction to homelessness makes things worse – not better.  

Returning to the minister’s disinformation – the minister claims that the Magistrates Court will only grant an eviction order if the court is satisfied there’s a breach of the agreement, that the tenant hasn’t rectified. 

But this isn’t true. 

The Housing Authority increasingly uses “fixed term tenancies”, so much so that “end of fixed term” terminations may be as high as 37 per cent of evictions from public housing.

I say ‘may be’, because the department counts these in an “other” category, and refuses to separate the data.  

These are “without grounds” terminations. 

In an “end of fixed term” case, the magistrate only needs to be satisfied that proper notice (30 days) was given, and the court cannot consider any issues of breaches or whether termination is justified.  

There is a current Supreme Court challenge to the Housing Authority’s use of fixed term tenancies.  

The decision is yet to be handed down. 

So, the Minister is well aware of the problem. 

Last resort

It is absolutely false to say that these tenants have the protection of a hearing before the Magistrates Court, where the allegations against them could be tested, and the court can hear their side, because they don’t. 

Indeed, the right to have a fair hearing before a tenancy is terminated is the very reason for the campaign to end without grounds terminations. 

It’s high time we reformed the Residential Tenancies Act to give all tenants this basic protection (WA is the only state refusing to reform renters rights). 

It’s time the Housing Minister ditched the disinformation, and came to the table to build solutions.