But the legislation is sometimes ineffective and fails to protect tenants in dire circumstances. Sarah would like to share her story because she is "devastated there aren’t harsher penalties for people like this". Please note that fake names have been used to protect the anonymity and privacy of the tenants at their request.
Mary is an older lady and she seemed fine when we first went to look at the property. We rented the property a few weeks later and signed a 12 month lease. A few months down the track she became the landlord from hell, coming round without notice, banging on the door on a Sunday, picking mandarins off our mandarin tree in the garden and also making numerous rude comments about us being in her eyes "poor".
The first thing to note is that the landlord and agent broke the law. The Residential Tenancies and Rooming Accommodation Regulations 2009 states a tenant can be listed if there has been a tribunal order for the payment of money AND the time for payment has passed. The agent would have known this but went ahead regardless and blacklisted this family who had fallen on hard times.It got extremely bad when me and my partner lost our jobs 2 days apart and had our 2 year old son to support as well as the bills piling up. I was stressed and depressed. We fell behind on rent and struggled to even eat. We rang Mary to explain our situation and said she was welcome to have our bond and we were trying to get housing and jobs as soon as possible.Her exact words were "you will be on the street you and your son". She hired a lawyer and a real estate agency. I cried that night so distressed by our bad situation and how someone could be so cruel. Sure enough the next day we received a letter stating we needed to vacate the property.My partner found another job and we were able to get a rental property out of town as we were unable to get one in our hometown as she had informed us she had told agencies not to rent from us. We moved out a week later. And to our surprise we received court forms totalling around $4000 as not only did Mary want her rent back she wanted payment for damages and compensation! Luckily the court case ended and she only received the rent we owed which got taken out of our bond and with our bond there was still $1,370 owing (this was including court costs).The judge made the order they got the bond and we just had to pay Mary back the $1,370 how ever way we wanted. We started up a $5 a month payment plan which isn’t a lot at all but was all we could afford. We then received harassing letters saying if we didn’t pay $100 a week we would be blacklisted. Obviously in our situation this was an enormous amount we couldn’t afford. We let them know we couldn’t afford it and all she could say was "sorry, owners request, if you don’t pay what she wants you blacklisted".Surely enough we received in the mail a letter informing us we are blacklisted on TICA. We still receive harassing letters and Facebook messages. We are harassed when we go out in public and can’t move on with our lives. We can’t get on with our lives and have even been forced to start processing bankruptcy just so we will be left alone. Mary told us she wants to see us on the street with our young child and no money. I am going to try and take out an AVO if anything happens again.
This case also highlights the difficulties families experience trying to pay bills in the private rental market when a job has fallen through and they are thrust onto Centrelink well-being support which is manifestly inadequate.
It also shows that legislation needs to be extended to cover informal blacklisting. This is a problem in the regional areas particularly small towns. As in this case, all the landlord needs to do is go for a walk around town and chat to real estate agents.
In this scenario, the family sued Mary for defamation. I don't know how successful they were, but it is one tool tenants can use to right the injustices of the current system.
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