Hello, everyone. This is law for community workers on the go, a podcast for community and health workers. My name is Bridget Barker. I work in the community legal education branch at Legal Aid New South Wales. I would like to begin by acknowledging that this recording was made on the country of the Widjabul Wiabul people of the Bundjalung Nation and on the Country of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge that this is Aboriginal land always was always will be.
This is Episode Six in our series Renting Matters. In this episode, we're going to talk about living in share houses and in boarding houses. At the time of recording this episode, the New South Wales Government has been reviewing the Boarding Houses Act of 2012 and is rewriting the Act to expand it to apply to a wider range of people who live in shared accommodation. Drafting of this proposed Shared Accommodation Act and consultation started in 2020 and more consultation is planned on the content of the proposed Act later this year, in 2022. It is likely there will be a new Act applying to share housing and boarding houses by the end of 2023. If you are listening to this episode after that time, please be aware that the law may have changed and that there will be new rules applying to your situation.
In this episode, we speak to Amanda, a solicitor from Redfern Legal Centre. Amanda shares some tips for people thinking about moving into a share house.
"My first tip would be to arrange to sign some kind of physical document with your head tenant or somebody who is managing that property when you move in, you can find share Housing Agreement templates online in various places, including the Tenants' Union website, also in Redfern Legal Centre Share Housing Survival Guide"
or a boarding house.
The first tip I would have for somebody who is thinking of moving into or living in a boarding house is to check out a resource that's on the Redfern Legal Centre website. It's called the Boarding Houses Kit.
We also speak to Beverly Baker, Chair of the Older Women's Network to get her perspective on the suitability of share housing and boarding houses for older women. We speak to Beverly in the context of older women being the fastest growing cohort of homeless Australians in recent years. Beverly talks about older women being forced to leave the community they have lived in for most of their lives because of a shortage of affordable housing.
So in the city if you're on a pension, there was one place in the last 12 months that you would have been able to rent on your own. At the moment there is nothing that you can rent. If you are on a pension and you are living in the city, there is nothing, you have to move out.
This series is a joint project between Legal Aid New South Wales and the Tenants Union of New South Wales. I'm speaking today with Amanda who is a solicitor from Redfern Legal Centre's tenancy and Housing service. We previously spoke to Amanda in episode 4 of renting matters. Redfern Legal Centre's catchment area includes people living in share housing and boarding houses so we asked Amanda to join us for this episode to talk about these living arrangements. Welcome, Amanda.
Thanks for having me.
I wanted to begin by asking you if you could explain for our listeners what share housing is?
For sure. Shared housing actually encapsulates quite a broad range of living circumstances. Generally share housing is where a group of unrelated individuals rent a property together. So this could be a group of friends that will sign up to a lease together and live in that property all on one lease, or it could be an individual renting a room from people that have already been living together. Or it could also even include individuals that rent a room from an owner or somebody else is renting out the property on an individual room by room basis. So it could be a bunch of strangers also just renting individual rooms.
What legal rights does a person who goes into a shared housing situation have?
it will depend on what your legal classification is and what your situation is, as to what rights you have. So if you're a co-tenant who is signed onto a lease with your friends, and you've all moved into a property together, then you'll all have the same rights and obligations as any other tenant in New South Wales would have. If you've moved into an established house already, and you're renting it off somebody who already has a lease for that place, and you're not on that lease, then in order to have any rights at all, you'll need to have a separate written agreement with that person. If you don't have a written agreement, then you'll likely not be considered a tenant. And then that can make things like enforcing any rights that you may or may not have very difficult.
And as well, if you've moved into somewhere like a boarding house, so that's a situation where a proprietor will rent out a property that has five or more beds for fee or reward with generally shared common spaces, and somebody who manages that property day to day, then you'll have rights under the Boarding Houses Act. So it will depend on what situation you're in as to what kind of rights you have and how comprehensive those rights are.
You've just mentioned the need for someone moving into an existing situation to have a written agreement. What tips would you have for a person thinking about going into a shared housing situation?
So my first tip would be to arrange to sign some kind of physical document with your head tenant or somebody who is managing that property when you move in. You can find share Housing Agreement templates online in various places, including the Tenants' Union website or also on Redfern Legal Centre's Share Housing Survival Guide, which are available freely on the internet. If your head tenant won't sign a physical agreement with you, you could at least try and get something in writing via email that outlines all the terms of your agreement. So it will ll need to have the parties named, so yours and the head tenant's name, the address of the premises and any sort of other terms that like when rent will be paid, how much rent will be paid, etc. If you have that, that will generally be enough to ensure that your rights are protected.
Another tip would be to make sure that you make time to inspect the place and meet any housemates before you actually agree to move in. There are a lot of stories that we hear of people signing up to live in a place just based on the internet advertisement, and then not meeting their expectations once they've paid money and moved in. And I guess my final tip would be to make sure that you pay the bond and any rent in advance in a way that gives you a receipt or proof that you've paid it so that if there are any disputes about that later on, you've got some really good evidence to show that you have paid it and taking photos of your space as well prior to moving in, in case there's any issues with your bond and the state of the premises when you leave.
You've justmentioned the bond in a shared housing situation. Is it lodged in the normal way or who would hold it and decide if and when it should be given back, if you leave that situation?
In the normal way means that you would move into a place and you would either pay your bond to a landlord specifically, or you can now pay it directly to the rental bond board, which is operated by the New South Wales Office of Fair Trading. So if your co tenants on a lease and share housing in that way, then your bond will sort of be paid normally in that way. So as a group, you'll put the money together, and either then pay the landlord or directly to the New South Wales Bond Board. And you'll get a receipt of that and you'll be able to access all of that online.
The majority of bonds in other share housing situations don't end up lodged. And that's because there is already a bond lodged for that property. So whoever has established the share house would have needed to have paid a bond in the normal way. And then what generally happens is that we see this cycle through of tenants or sub-tenants in a share house, and it's quite a transient situation. So normally, when you move into a share house that's already been established, you will pay a bond. That will then get paid by the head tenant to the outgoing tenant. So that means when you move out, what will generally happen is that when a new sub-tenant moves in you will then be paid your portion of the bond. And so that's not generally lodged, the head tenant normally manages that. And there can be issues if say for example, you move out but it's taking a while to find someone to take over your space. If you've got a written agreement, you'll be able to obtain your bond through the head tenant by going through the legal process in the Tribunal but quite often it's not the bond that is lodged in a normal way.
I guess a tip for people living in share housing then would be to ensure they get some kind of receipt for payment of their bond so they have evidence of having paid it?
Yeah, absolutely. So if you move out and your head tenant is not going to give you the bond or hasn't immediately given the bond back to you, what we would suggest is to write them a letter, ask for the amount of bond that you've paid. Give them a reasonable amount of time to return it. So that's 14 days. If they don't then pay that too, you can make an application to the Tribunal to get that money returned. But what you will need is evidence of payment and evidence of how much you've paid. So that's why it's super important to keep evidence of a receipt or a transfer statement that outlines how much you paid.
How are utilities paid for in a shared housing setup?
So most of the time utilities are set up in a way that sort of just divides the amount by the number of people that are living in the house. So whoever establishes the share house, generally will put the utilities in their name, and it will be an agreement between the housemates is to how that is paid. One thing to keep in mind though, is if you're a tenant on a separate written agreement to everybody else, then it may be that you're not required to pay for utilities, because under the Residential Tenancies Act, in order for a tenant to be liable for utilities, they need to be what we call separately metered. So that means be able to be determined how much each tenant is using. If you're living in a share housing situation where you've come into an established share house and that isn't easily identifiable, it may be that you're not required to pay for utilities at all.
What about notice if you want to move out in a share housing situation or if your head tenant or co-tenants want you to move out, what notice periods operate in that situation?
So if you're a tenant, so if you have a separate written agreement with your head tenant, then it will be the exact notice periods as a normal tenancy. So there are varying notice periods for different reasons why you would want to leave. So if you don't have a fixed term, and you'd like to leave, then you would need to give 21 days written notice. If you do have a fixed term, then it's likely to be much harder to leave prior to the end of that. But you can give 14 days' notice if you want to leave at the end of that fixed term.
There are various notice periods required if your head tenant would like you to move out, and they can be found online on the Faiir Trading website. I guess in that situation. it is important to note, though, that if you do have your own written agreement, a head, tenant can't just evict you. A head tenant will need to give you the correct written notice and then go through the process that any other landlord would need to go to in order to evict that tenant. So that would involve waiting for the notice period to expire and then making an application to the New South Wales Civil and Adminstrative Tribunal, showing them that the agreement should be terminated and then obtaining orders and a warrant. And then there's also obviously obligations on the head tenant about what happens with any goods that are left behind.
If you're a co tenant and you're wanting another co tenant to move out that can be quite legally challenging to have happen. You can't just serve a notice on your co-tenant and have them move out. You would need to either go to the Tribunal and ask the Tribunal to terminate that person's co-tenancy. Or you'd need to come to some sort of arrangement with that co-tenant about ending their own co-tenancy.
If you're a co tenant, you can end your own co tenancy in various circumstances. One is if there's "special circumstances" and you can ask the Tribunal to termiante it. If you're suffering from domestic violence, there is a process whereby you can terminate your co-tenancy. And also if you're outside of a fixed term, then you only need to give 21 days' written notice and you can terminate your own co-tenancy in that way.
That's right. And I should also mention that we did go into those notice periods in detail in Episode Four of this podcast series Renting Matters. So if people have queries about that they can go to the resources that you've mentioned, but they could also listen to that earlier episode. In the work that you do, what sort of problems do people call you about in relation to share houses.
So people call us in relation to a very wide range of issues. So we see a lot of issues in relation to bond. Because of the transient nature of share houses we see bond issues arise quite a lot, particularly when a tenant isn't being replaced immediately by another tenant.
We also see issues where a head tenant is trying to evict a sub-tenant and sub-tenant does not want to leave. We see issues about who does the dishes and how often people are contributing to housework. So there's a really broad range of issues that people will come to us about.
So not necessarily all strictly legal issues by the sounds of it.
No, not necessarily all strictly legal issues. Share housing is quite often such a complex beast that quite often people do require help even just resolving those sorts of disputes even when they're not strictly legal. So it's a really interesting area and to be honest, when people in clients come to us with issues with share housing it is very rarely straightforward and there's a lot of grey area to most issues that come to us.
So what about subletting? What is subletting? And how is it different from share housing?
Subletting is a kind of shared housing, and it can take a number of forms. The first is where a tenant is living in the property, or premises. They're on the lease, and they're living there already and they will sublet part of the property. So whether or not that's a spare bedroom, sometimes a study or like they'll make a makeshift bedroom. What they'll do is they'll rent that out to someone else, to either make money for themselves or to help cover the rent.
The second circumstance of subletting that we often see is a person or a company may rent a property. So a house or an apartment, but they won't live there and instead, what they'll do is rent out the bedrooms to other people in order to make a profit.
Where a person or company rents the property out then rents out the rooms separately, how is that different to a boarding house?
So sometimes it's not too different The distinction between a boarding house and a share house can sometimes be very blurred. A boarding house has a legal definition, which requires five or more beds to be rented out for fee or reward. So any property that doesn't have five beds or five bedrooms to be rented out automatically will not be considered a boarding house. And so in those circumstances, if somebody has rented out that property and then is subletting the rooms, it will just be effectively a landlord tenant relationship. It will just be that each individual who's living in that premises will be on their own written agreement and they will all automatically be considered tenants. They won't be required to have a separate written agreement because that head tenant isn't living with them. So the distinction comes from the amount of bedrooms that can be rented out.
I guess that must create some very interesting living situations where the people that are living in the house in close proximity to each other don't necessarily have had any prior contact with each other.
Yeah, and we see a lot of that in Sydney, particularly in relation to houses that are rented out to students. And quite often people will be moving into a property where they don't know the other people that they're going to be living with. And that can create issues. And sometimes it works really well for people as well, depending on the situation that they're in.
Amanda, do you have any advice for community workers who are supporting someone who's living in these varied living arrangements that come under the term shared housing?
Yes. So I've probably got three main tips for community workers who are supporting people in the shared housing arrangement.
The first one is to really make sure their clients have some form of agreement, whether that's a signed contract, or whether or not, it's an email that has all of the details of the agreement that they have. And even if you take on a client who's already living in a situation like this and doesn't have a written agreement, don't let that deter you, because somebody can still enter into a written agreement, even though they're living there. So encouraging your client to have one or to create one if they don't already have one would be a really important first tip.
The second is to try and make sure that they are keeping records of everything. So records of the agreement. Records of the amounts of money that they're paying. Records of the condition of the property when they moved in, because having those records are going to be helpful if there is ever a dispute.
And the third tip I have is that a lot of disputes between people in shared houses or between head tenants and sub-tenants can often be sorted out with some form of mediation or help with communication. So trying to assist with communicating between your client and the person that they're in dispute with, if you have capacity to do so, can be really helpful and can help avoid potentially needing to go into the Tribunal and have an argument about somebody's legal status, which can be quite complex in some circumstances. So if you have the ability to try and help even draft a letter for your client, then that can often have really positive outcomes as well.
Great tips I imagined too a community worker could also use the services of the Community Justice Centre because that's a free service offered to people as well.
Yeah, Community Justice Centres can be really great. The only problem that we see with those is that the other party can refuse to communicate or engage in that process. And if they do that, then there's not really much that can be done. But Community Justice centres are a really great initiative. It can be really helpful for parties that want to come to an arrangement together
Amanda I thought I'd also ask you about boarding houses which you've touched on briefly. I understand that you have people in Redfern Legal Centres' catchment area living in boarding houses. Would you please explain what a boarding house is and what the laws or regulations are that govern those?
Absolutely. So a boarding house is a premises where there are five or more beds available for fee or reward. So it's important to note that there needs to be at least five beds or rooms available for rent at that premises and that the bed actually needs to be provided to be considered a boarding house. So that's the legal definition of a boarding house. A boarding house can be either registered or unregistered. So the New South Wales Fair Trading keeps a register of boarding houses operating in New South Wales if they decide to register themselves. But there are also a number of other boarding houses that are unregistered, but still meet that legal definition of a boarding house. So will still be captured by the laws regulating boarding houses.
And so the law regulating boarding houses in New South Wales at the moment is the New South Wales Boarding Houses Act of 2012. And this outlines a set of "occupancy principles" which includes the rights and obligations that both boarding house residents and proprietors of boarding houses have in New South Wales.
Under the current legislation, what rights does a person living in a boarding house have and how does that differ from those of a tenant under the Residential Tenancies Act?
So as I mentioned, there's a list of "occupancy principles" under the Boarding Houses Act. And it's actually quite a small list, and it's quite sparse in comparison to the Residential Tenancies Act. The Residential Tenancies Act outlines, everything from pre- agreement matters, then it goes right through every stage of a tenancy until its end and then what happens to the bond afterwards.
The "occupancy principles" in the Boarding Houses Act, they're not very detailed and they still only deliver a rudimentary kind of set of rights, and then anything outside of that is sort of left to individual agreements. So under the Boarding Houses Act, boarding house residents will enjoy a number of rights. One of those would be to be able to live in a property with quiet enjoyment, so the reasonable peace, comfort and privacy aspect. They'll have the right to have repairs done to their premises, or their boarding house room. They'll also have the right to receive notice before they're asked to leave the premises and they've also got rights in relation to security deposit. So how much can be charged and when that needs to be returned to you and what a proprietor could withhold from you at the end of your stay at a boarding house.
Big differences, though, between boarding houses and residential tenancies, is that a proprietor can serve a boarding house resident with reasonable written notice, and then evict them without needing to go to NCAT and get a warrant to have somebody evicted. So, under the Residential Tenancies Act, as we sort of discussed earlier in the episode, if a landlord wants to get rid of you, or if the head tenant wants to get rid of their sub-tenant, they'll need to give appropriate written notice which is actually defined in the Act, then they'll need to wait for that to expire and then go through a legal process and can't actually remove the person themselves.
In the Boarding Houses Act all that's required is "reasonable written notice", which could be effectively a week if you're paying rent weekly, and then they can also then take action to remove you themselves. So there's much less rights that you have as a boarding house resident in New South Wales than if you were a tenant.
When you renta room in a boarding house, do you only have access to your room? Or do you have access to common facilities as you would in other share housing situations?
It really depends on the boarding house, but the majority of boarding houses will be that you will rent a room and that room may have a bathroom privately accessed or not and then you also have access to common spaces. So that could include living rooms, or kitchens or bathrooms, or you could have a mix of both. There are some instances where we see that somebody is living in a registered boarding house or in a property that could be considered a boarding house, but effectively has their own self contained unit as well. And so that raises legal issues as to whether or not somebody is in fact a tenant or a boarding house resident. But there are a number of living circumstances and a number of different combinations and permutations of what you will have access to in a boarding house. Some boarding houses even offer services like cooking and things like that. So it really depends on what kind of boarding house but generally, you will have access to a private space and to shared common space as well.
What sort of issues do you receive calls about that arise in relation to boarding houses?
The most common calls are in relation to eviction and what's appropriate notice to be given. We alsosee issues in terms of getting security deposit back. And we see issues in relation to what happens to people's goods, if they're not able to remove them in time before being evicted.
In relation to boarding houses, we also see that boarding houses aren't always necessarily as they appear and sometimes a property is set up as a boarding house, but the arrangements that they're entering into are actually legally residential tenancy agreements. And so we quite often will see these tricky, jurisdictional issues arise in circumstances that often then impacts on the other issues that they're calling about as well, like eviction.
Do you have any tips for someone who is either living in or thinking of moving into a boarding house,
The first tip I would have for somebody who is thinking of moving into or living in a boarding house is to check out a resource, it's on the Redfern Legal Centre website. It's called "The Boarding Houses Kit. Boarding Houses and the law". And it is probably the only resource of its kind that I've seen recently. And it's a really comprehensive guide to boarding houses, to the legal requirements of a boarding house, and also different ways to sort of resolve disputes in boarding houses. So it's a great idea to check that out.
I'd also suggest that you inspect the room, and also the common areas of the boarding house before moving in. And also asking to see any occupancy agreements that the proprietor is going to want you to sign. It's important also to check out the house rules. In a lot of boarding houses, they'll have an occupancy agreement, which is a bit like a residential tenancy agreements that they want you to sign. But they'll also have a list of house rules. So it's quite important that you have a look at those to determine whether or not living in that property and abiding by those house rules is something that you're going to be able to do or something that you'll want to be able to do as well.
They're great tips. What about any tips for community workers who might be supporting a boarding house resident?
So my tips for community workers would be again, a plug for the Boarding Houses and the Law Kit on Redfern Legal Centre's page , just because it's such a great and comprehensive resource. Check that out. Also ensuring that your client is keeping copies of all the receipts of their rent payments and security deposit payments, and things like that. And also to make sure that you get advice if there's a tricky jurisdictional question, or you can see that somebody is potentially living sort of in a self contained unit within a boarding house, and they're not really being managed by somebody living on site, it's quite possible your client could actually be a tenant. And because some of these issues move really, really quickly, for example, an eviction issue, the proprietor may have only given your client a week to get out. Quite often the tribunal can't get to them within that time, so it's really important to move quite quickly in some of those circumstances.
And getting advice from your local tenants advice and advocacy service if your client ends up in a situation like that can be really important. There's also some draft sample letters within the kit that we have on the RLC website that you can use to assist your clients in order to get things like security deposits returned as well. So making use of those resources to help your clients that will probably be my top tips.
Do you see or come across in your work many people living with disability who are living in boarding house situations?
We see a wide range of people and often people with disability and mental health issues do find themselves needing to access boarding houses and shared living arrangements, purely because of income and statutory income, particularly in Sydney, where a statutory income won't allow you to rent a property individually. So in those circumstances, we do see a broad range of people who are experiencing disadvantage, needing to access those forms of living.
I can imagine. Also given the scarcity of public housing available to people and the long waiting lists for people to get into public housing. They would have to access these sorts of living arrangements rather than end up being homeless.
Absolutely. For a large majority of people right from students, right through to people on statutory income. In Sydney particularly these are sorts of the only forms of accommodation that are accessible to most. The public housing waiting list for any suburb in Sydney is currently 10 years or greater for the general waitlist. So quite often these sorts of living situations are the only ones that are feasible for people experiencing disadvantage and for students as well. And we have a lot of universities in our catchment areas as well. So you see a broad range of people needing to access these forms of living. And that creates a climate for a lot of disputes. It also creates quite a big black hole where people are not always covered by residential tenancy laws and also allows for some companies and some individuals really to take advantage of people who are needing to access accommodation in shared arrangements.
Thank you, Amanda. They were all the questions that I had for you, is there anything else you wanted to add on the topic of shared housing and boarding houses?
Just to make sure that you do your research before you move into a place. We've seen too many times, people who have agreed to move into a place based on an advertisement or a quick look through and then have gotten to the place and it's not what they expected, or they've opened the drawer and it's full of mould and things like that. So before you agree to move in, make sure that you do your research. Try and talk to your house mates if you're moving into an established house, just to make sure that you'll get along with them and things like that. And that will save you essentially a lot of drama.
It's really interesting, because some of the lack of protection within share housing or boarding houses can actually work to benefit some people as well. So some people want the ability to not really be protected by the legislation so that they can leave whenever they want. For example, they want the flexibility just to be able to go without needing to give notice and without needing to have that notice period in force. And as long as they're happy to lose a bit of their bond that can actually serve to benefit and to help some renters as well. So it can be really tricky to please everybody, I suppose.
Thanks, Amanda. That's really great advice. And thank you for agreeing to participate again in this podcast series.
Thank you very much for having me.
My next guest on the podcast is Beverly Baker. Beverly is the Chair of the Older Women's Network. Welcome. Beverly, would you please tell our audience about the Older Women's Network and the work that it does?
The Older Women's Network was established around 35 years ago. It came out of the Pensioners and Superannuants Association, when we realised that that was a very blokey environment, very much male dominated, and that the needs and the wishes, the aspirations of women was slightly different. We weren't going to have huge superannuation portfolios. But we did know that we needed companionship, support friendship and someone to give us a voice. So the Older Women's Network was established to do that. And our responsibility is to ensure that older women are treated with respect and dignity as they age.
And that's what's brought us into this whole discussion on homelessness, because we are absolutely stund to realise that the fastest growing demography for homelessness is women over the age of 55 and that is quickly dropping. And as women tend to live, on average, between three and five years longer than men, they are very, very much dependent on the social infrastructure, because very few people are left with a huge legacy from their passing partner. So it's a very complex issue that we're dealing with at the moment.
Beverly, when you refer to older women, does the Older Women's Network define older women in a particular way?
Look, we don't. We've got women between the ages of about 50 and 94, who are all part of our organisation. We've got 20 groups across the state and they build their networks around the interests of the women in their areas. The state organisation is a very different animal. It supports the organisations around the state. But our job is to give those women a voice at a state level where decisions about women are made. We're not party political, we don't care who is mucking it up for women. We're going to be having something to say to them about how they can make it better.
In your work you encounter older women who have had to leave the area they've lived in most of their lives and their local community to find secure housing. Why is that?
Look, unfortunately, we are dealing with the tail end of a neoconservative government. I don't know whether your listeners will remember but when Nick Greiner was elected to power, he determined that housing was not a state responsibility and that the housing market could handle the housing. And so he stopped investing in social and community housing. Government after government has not put the money back, and has not re-engaged in the value of social housing and why it is absolutely essential for a civil society.
When I grew up back in the 50s, owning your own home was the main aim for people. It now appears to be owning five or six homes, so you can negatively gear them and not pay any tax. That's a major shift in attitude. And that attitude shift started back in the 1980s when this whole nonsense about our house being an asset, rather than being an essential place of shelter started occurring. We are now facing the full ramifications of those decisions. It should be that if you aren't renting your vacant property out or making an effort to rent it out, then you start paying for it, you start losing the tax benefit that you've got, because taxpayers' money is being used to accrue wealth at the moment, rather than to provide the social infrastructure that is definitely needed.
And so they're the structural reasons that women are having to leave the areas that they've lived most of their lives in?
So in the city, if you're on a pension, there was one place in the last 12 months that you would have been able to rent on your own. At the moment, there is nothing that you can rent. If you are on a pension and you are living in the city, there is nothing. You have to move out. And as we've seen during COVID, house prices are going up so rental prices are going up and it's getting more and more difficult if you are relying on an aged pension. It's impossible on unemployment but if you are an on aged pension, to find a place of your own to live. It's the end result of no investment in social housing, no commitment to ensuring that everyone has a roof over their head, which to me is part of a civil society. It's the thing you don't want people living on the streets in poverty, you want them in their own home, where they are safe and secure. And we as a society have dropped that ball big time.
I guess also a problem for women generally, is that they don't remain in the workforce for the same period as men, so they don't manage to accrue the same level of superannuation so they don't have the same financial security as a man of a comparable age.
They don't. And there's this myth that superannuation is this golden bullet. Of all of the working women in Sydney, over 60% of them earn under $34,000. So you're not going to be accruing a lot of super even if you work full time because you're just not in a high paying job. Then if you take time out for having children, where's that money going to come from because you don't earn enough? So women are on average retiring with superannuation of around $130,000. That is not usually even enough to pay off the balance of your mortgage, or if something happens to your partner. And as women outlive men, 60% of people on the pension are in fact women so that they are going to need financial support. They can't afford the private rental market, and where are they going to live?
So it's this vicious cycle, because superannuation is really important, but it's only a tiny percentage of the population that built up the level of super. It's just not the reality for well, 90% of my peers, I'd say, that even though we have some super, it's not enough for us to live. It will not sustain us, between our retirement age and our time of leaving the planet.
We have to look at other ways. And if we don't own our own home, which the age pension is designed for. If you own your own home, you can live quite comfortably on the pension. If you don't own your own home, you are facing homelessness. It's just not good enough. You know, in this country, one of the wealthiest in the world in one of the wealthiest cities in the world, to have women sleeping in their cars because they can't find rental accommodation and couldn't afford it if they could. It's just not good enough.
And Beverly, are there any obstacles that prevent all the women from entering shared housing or subletting from another person?
There is. Mainly because you get to the stage where you don't want to have to accommodate anybody else, but that's part of growing old. But there are also blockages for women who, say own their own home, are living on the pension but would like to offer a place to someone else. As soon as they do that, down comes the Tax Office on them like a tonne of bricks. They have to prove that they're not in a relationship with them, that their money is not coming in. There's no wriggle room for women to offer their place to someone and still be able to live independently/ Even if they open it up for free to someone else, all of that stuff comes into play and they have to then justify and go through and maybe lose some of their pension. So it costs them to be generous. It costs them to open their house.
It means that women are really quite nervous about inviting other people to share their home. And we're looking at ways in which we can support them doing that and trying to get some certainty around the tax issues, that if you are someone who is prepared to open your home and share with another woman, that you are not then suffering a financial burden for doing that. We need to seriously look at that far more closely and far faster than we're looking at this absolute wealth transference of negative gearing. Everything we seem to be doing is only to support wealth creation, and certainly nothing to do with building a more civil society.
Would boarding houses be a viable or a safe option for older women?
They're just not, they're not a safe option, they're not a viable option. You're isolated, you don't know who your neighbours are going to be. You don't know how safe you're going to be. You don't know what the quality of the boarding house is. Our members are saying that there's no way they would move into a boarding house No way, except they've said that if it was run and managed by a women's only organisation, where they knew they would only have women in there with them, that they would be part of a cooperative, perhaps and jointly run it, then certainly that would be on the agenda. And they would certainly look at that.
Joining into cooperatives is something that we're looking at, to see if there's a way in which we can encourage women who are prepared and want to live together, are happy to live together, that they can pool their income, pool their assets. Buy a property between them and then use it as a cooperative so that each of them are shareholders in that business and each of them have an equal say. So it's a shared operation. And cooperatives working now very, very well for disabled people who are in group homes. And they're taking out cooperativess o they have total management and control over those group homes. They're not added as someone else. And we're looking at the same options for older women who have some assets, but not enough to translate into buying a whole house but they might be able to buy a part of a house and then set up a shared arrangement in that place with friends, or people who they have vetted and they think they can get along with. So there are those options, but they are still very small and still a very long way away.
And can I ask, because boarding houses aren't a safe option for women, are they actually choosing to live in their car rather than enter those sorts of environments?
Yes. It would appear that that is true. It would appear that some of the women living in their car, have moved into a boarding house and had a terrible experience and moved out and felt they were safer in their car than they were in that environment. Like anything you can't generalise. It's a last ditch when you've moved into your car. You have just about tried everything else. You've tried the women's refuges, you've tried boarding houses, you've tried couchsurfing, you've tried living in friends' garages. You've tried house sitting. You've tried all of those things and when you finally got to the stage where you realise there is no where for you to go, that's when you move into your car. But the heartbreaking thing for the old Women's Network is, is that when women have realised that they've had enough of the violence and the abuse that they have at home, and they come to us and say "we're leaving him. We're not going to be beaten up anymore. Where can we go?" We can't get them anywhere. There's no way for them to go. And you either have to say "Look, you've either got to go home, back to this person who's abusing you or you might have to live in your car." The first question we say is, have you got any family? Is there anybody you can go and live with because we know how hard it is to find accommodation for women who are escaping domestic violence, irrespective of their age.
So Beverly, given the governmental problems over time that you've outlined, what do you think government could do to improve housing for older women?
Well, we've had a federal government that has just thrown billions at the uber wealthy and companies that don't need the money. If they've got that kind of money to throw away to wealthy people imagine where we'd be if we had $42 billion dollars spent on providing low cost homes, social housing for people across the nation. We wouldn't go to solving the problem because in New South Wales alone, we have 55,000 people searching for homes and we have well over that as a national, but it would make a big hole in the lack of accommodation that we are facing and that we're seeing across the board at the moment.
The New South Wales State Government has committed 120 something million dollars over four years to provide low cost housing housing. We have 55,000 people in New South Wales on the waiting list. Over the time, over the four years that that's committed to, that will build 400 houses. 400 houses won't even deal with the growth, let alone the already people sitting on the waiting list waiting. We have to have a massive, massive injection of funds and the state government is ideally placed to do it. It can have a look at the vacancies and the unoccupied rates in Sydney and say, Okay, we're gonna hit you with unoccupied tax, so that it would encourage people to drop their rents, and at least let people move ins so they can still run at a loss, it just won't be as big a loss. And they will, it'll take them a little bit longer to accrue the asset.
If they're serious, and they don't want to see people, especially older women living on the street, they're going to have to bite the bullet and make intergenerational commitments to provide these houses. Because having provided them, the houses themselves become intergenerational, as people move in and out and on. So that the whole idea that everything's a left to the private market, and the market will determine Well, what our market has determined is that the only people who matter are the people with wealth. That's not a market, I think that serves the community particularly well.
Well, I think that's a great note to end on. Thanks very much, Beverly.
That's all for this episode of renting matters. Thank you for joining us and thank you to our guests, Amanda and Beverly for sharing their knowledge. Look out for our next episode in the series which will be out soon. If you are listening to Renting Matters for the first time please be aware that there are five previous episodes that you can find on your favourite podcasting app.
