This is a well-written account of what renting in the private sector is like, and fairly accurate depiction of the challenges tenants encounter - from a lying thieving landlord to a hapless hamstrung council and finally to a disinterested gullible tribunal.
We moved from Warwick to Caboolture in early March of 2008 after our first experience of a ratbag landlord. We lived in an old-style house with, as it would turn out, a large number of issues (which of course you don’t find out about until after you’ve moved in). Issues that came about after moving in included asbestos in the outside laundry, a dangerous taped up wire with a light-bulb at the end of it that was utilised as a light near the filthy stove, doors where the wind just blew through the frames, a hole in cheap stained glass window, an electrical system where you couldn’t use the heaters and teakettle at the same time. It was the sort of place where the owner/realtor only did about three inspections in the two years we were stuck there.
"There should be a law that issues like this and other urgent issues are dealt with immediately by tradesmen regardless of whether the owner wants to or not."
We got away from there but lost a chunk of our bond for bogus reasons but moving to the coast I didn’t have the time or strength to fight (I’ve since learned it wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference if I had).So we moved Caboolture into a house where we were to stay from March 2008 to roughly September 2012. We didn’t have any problems with the real estate agent who was in charge of the property, most issues were fixed pretty quickly except for the flooding (the yard was to require drainage which was eventually put in after the 2010/11 floods). There should be a law that issues like this and other urgent issues are dealt with immediately by tradesmen regardless of whether the owner wants to or not.
The owners we got chatty with, they seemed like decent people, we did what we could like with new taps in the laundry and a small rose garden in the front, though there was so much wrong with the place I felt sorry for those who bought it. They were talking about getting married and how they couldn’t afford it so we made a few suggestions but unfortunately they sold the house, which caused us to move again. I will add during the time after being on the government housing list for approximately eight years, of course the rules were changed so we didn’t qualify anymore. It was from this point I began to suffer from stress and the fear of being homeless started, a feeling which goes on to this day.
This house we moved into was honestly great. Plenty of room, the neighbours were the real deal, very friendly, etc. It was hard work cleaning up the trash from the trees that fell in the yard. We were only in this house a year because a realtor came to value the place, at the same time telling us it was being valued for sale which turned out to be a fallacy but we couldn’t hang around; so we moved again, this time into a house that was to prove to be the biggest nightmare ever (to date).
"It was from this point I began to suffer from stress and the fear of being homeless started, a feeling which goes on to this day."
The landlord and the realtor were friendly at first, with the realtor saying she was happy to see us get the house (don’t know why). Almost from the beginning things went wrong with the house. The toilet consistently blocking, the cement slab at the back shed dust like a big desert storm and covered everything in the house with the right wind gusts, the thermostat or something on the top of the stove went kaput which meant we couldn’t control the heat from low to high under the pans.
The roof of the back patio was tinfoil which was to cause a series of medical issues for us later on. As I said the toilet in the house kept blocking up, resulting us in using large bottles of caustic soda which sort of worked, we are sure the toilet is the size of a child’s toilet. A year and a half later the owner (who did most of if not all the repairs and wasn’t even a handyman by any stretch of the imagination) dug out the sewer pipe at the side of the house, we left him to do the work not thinking he was as big of a scumbag as he turned into.
The day after we received a phone call from the second rental manager who took over this property, she told us that he had called her and said that the pipe was blocked thoroughly with sanitary pads and that we did it. There were several odd things about that, a plumber said that it was odd because he had never known water to flow uphill, completely against the laws of gravity, from the house (plus two of us didn’t use such things anymore).
Maybe he thought he could put it over three women? Nobody knows. Despite all that we argued about how the pipes did not look to be a sufficient size for water sewage pipes and we’d built our own home in the past so we knew the standard size. The owner said “you can get a private plumber to check things and pay for it if you want”, so we thought the best way to do that, find out what the regulations were, was to contact the local Shire Council and we did.
We were put in contact with a plumbing inspector, we told him the story from start to finish and he asked if he could come around to have a look, which we accepted. He said he’d have to try and contact the owner and find out what the application number was for the second toilet the inspector said there was no record of it on their files, nor the sinks against the back wall of the house. They had been in the kitchen and were removed when “new” ones were put in.
"A fair country is what Tony Abbott calls Australia, I don't know which Australia he lives in but it's not this one."
The owner as it turned out did all the building work and the plumbing work himself (and this certainly shows). The council had trouble trying to get hold of the owner, much less getting him to do anything. A plumber was eventually called when we kept complaining, he dug open a ditch which exposed a sewer pipe and lid. In this pit and in the pipe were plastic bags that look relatively new-the owner no doubt put them there when you guess why. The second plumber used a spade to open the lid of the pipe and inside there was a rather large lump of something blue, the plumber said it was glue - no wonder the pipe gets clogged, the lump was large enough to block it.
Flooding of the back porch was to prove to be a significant problem during the times when we got any heavy rain. Onto the back porch and between the sinks and the wall of the back of the house/doors (photos available) was a drain which only served to trap water long after the rain had gone as it was built wrong (of course) and flooded into the garage.
The shed also leaked so we had to keep everything on the porch, couldn’t leave anything on the rotary clothes line as it was under a large mango tree which the local bats loved. They would feed on the mangoes and then drop the leftovers, along with their faeces/droppings which could drop onto any washing on the line, the same with all the other birds that used to love the tree.
Also because of the thieves in the neighbourhood (we think it was the neighbours but with the stuff the owner stole it could have been him who stole six of our best bath towels among other things). We complained about it for ages, nothing was done, then the rental manager came to look at the list of issues I had brought up. The owner said ages before this that he’d cut the tree back, at this inspection the realtor dissuaded him and out of moving the rotary line, instead building a temporary one which we declined because we doubted it would ever be built and if it was with the owner’s lack of ability as a handyman, that’s a scary thought. So we’d long since put up rope lines on the back porch under the tinfoil roof that also leaked when it rained. It was during the inspection that mum suggests a couple of alternative ways but the realtor just told her to “shut up”.
We also had long since complained about how the windows didn’t lock, this was ignored too so we used dowelling rods in the runners it was only fixed not long before we moved out and after the owner had been given a Remedy Breach notice which he ignored until it ran out. The exhaust fan over the stove only went as far as the roof and began to rattle, but again that was ignored.
The Tribunal we finally went to was useless, the owner was represented by the realtor but I as a tenant was on my own. We did finally get the chance to move out at least a few weeks early but that didn't prove easy. The exit inspection list included a dented fence that we didn't do and the realtor and owner walked past to enter the property for months and did nothing, a tatty old curtain that I'd love to have tested to see how old it is, a laundry sink that wasn't cracked till we moved out all of which we have to fix because we are responsible for everything that happens on the inside of the fence whether we were there when it happened or not. A fair country is what Tony Abbott calls Australia, I don't know which Australia he lives in but it's not this one.
I think the outrage tenants feel stems from the gap between their sense of fairness and current laws that so easily permit abuse. It is clear that some landlords, not all, know how to bilk the system. And it's our politicians that are letting tenants down. You can't tell me that the law strikes a fair balance between tenants and landlords.
