Accessibility Tools
Landlords, agents, and third party companies will no longer be allowed to charge prospective renters for background checks when applying for a rental property.
This measure aims to address a recent trend of rental application platforms asking renters to pay a fee for a background check to improve their chances of securing a home.
For more, see Tenants’ Union of NSW updated Factsheet 2: Starting a tenancy.
From 31 October 2024, the landlord cannot increase your rent more than once in any 12 month period. The new rules apply to all rent increases that come into effect after 31 October 2024, even if you received notice before this date.
Importantly, these new rules apply to all residential tenancy agreements – including new and existing fixed-term and periodic (ongoing) agreements. The new laws also apply to any new residential tenancy agreement for the same premises (including renewal), as long as the landlord and at least one tenant remains the same.
The rent increases must also come with proper notice, and can still be challenged if it is “excessive”.
For more detail see the Tenants’ Union of NSW updated Factsheet 4: Rent increases
Illawarra Legal Centre (ILC) has a strong history of providing our community with support and services, while navigating challenges and change behind the scenes, and this year was no different.
Community legal centres like ours are in a funding and workforce crisis. The Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis campaign launches today. Illawarra Legal Centre is proud to have endorsed the campaign sign-on.
Read and endorse here: www.savecommunitylegalcentres.com/take-action
Community legal centres help hundreds of thousands of people every year to resolve everyday legal problems in areas like housing, relationships, debts and money problems, and discrimination. People trust their local community legal centre to support them early, before legal problems snowball to crisis point.
Community legal centres play a crucial role preventing and responding to domestic and family violence. Frontline family law and family violence services make up the largest areas of work for many of the 150+ centres across Australia.
Community legal centres are at breaking point. Funding shortages and overwhelming demand are forcing centres to turn away over 1,000 people each day and reduce services to local communities across the country. The crisis will only worsen until the sector secures a guarantee of ongoing funding.
The 2024 Federal Budget failed to provide the urgent funding boost and long-term funding security the community legal sector desperately needs. With less than a year’s guaranteed funding left, community legal centres are in the most uncertain position we have faced in a decade.
The costs to our communities of the chronic underfunding of community legal centres include:
Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis calls on governments to step up and provide fair funding to community legal centres:
#SaveOurCentres #FundFrontlineServices #CommunityLaw
Celebrated every July, NAIDOC week is an opportunity to come together as a community to celebrate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, history and heritage.
2024’s NAIDOC Week theme is ‘Keep the Fire Burning! Blak, Loud and Proud”.
This year’s theme celebrates the unyielding spirit of our communities and invites all to stand in solidarity, amplifying the voices that have long been silenced.
You can support NAIDOC Week and get to know your local Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander communities through activities and events held across the country. This year you will find Illawarra Legal Centre participating in the following NAIDOC events:
Monday 8/7/24 11am-2pm – Shellharbour City Council NAIDOC Event at Shellharbour Civic Centre
Tuesday 9/7/24 10am-1pm – NAIDOC Family Fun Day at Darcy Wentworth Park Warrawong
Thursday 11/7/24 10am-2pm – CareWays NAIDOC Event at Koonawarra Community Centre
#NAIDOC2024
#BlakLoudProud
#NAIDOCWeek
#NAIDOC
Celebrate NAIDOC week with us!
We are Tenant Advice and Advocacy Services and community legal centres across NSW, who provide advice and advocacy to renters in public (including Aboriginal Housing Office homes) and community housing.
Everyday we help thousands of people whose lives and health is directly affected by the state of their public housing and community housing homes. For some of our services we provide direct support for people to try and get fundamental repairs – to make sure their houses are safe and habitable – a basic right under the law.
For many other services we support clients with complex legal issues where it is common that poorly repaired and maintained community and public housing is a backdrop to their lives. Our clients are women who have escaped domestic violence, people suffering from chronic illnesses and disability and people who are struggling to make ends meet. The poor state of their housing impacts on their wellbeing.
Recent tragic events have put a spotlight on long understood and acknowledged critical failures in the current system, underscoring the need for additional resourcing and action to ensure all people in public and community housing live in safe and healthy homes.
The explosion at Waikanda Crescent in Whalan, resulting in the death of Mhey Yumol Jasmin and injuries to several others, is heartbreaking. Our deepest condolences go out to Mhey Yumol’s family, the injured residents, and the affected local community.
This tragedy, suspected to be caused by a gas leak, has raised serious concerns. We acknowledge and appreciate the urgency with which the NSW government has moved to support impacted residents and community members, and to investigate the cause further.
The incident has focused attention on a historic and ongoing pattern of neglect in public and community housing. All renters should be able to raise maintenance concerns and have those concerns promptly attended to. This requires all providers, whether public or private, to be reliable and accountable in their approach to building safety and maintenance.
Sadly, the state of public and community housing is a story of neglect. Our clients have to deal with issues such as chronic and severe mould, sewerage issues, water leaks and problems with essential services without speedy resolution. Renters in public and community housing report they fear retaliation or poor treatment when seeking repairs. They often face prolonged waits for essential repairs, and receive only temporary fixes that fail to address the root problems. Even when they take legal action the work is not undertaken as ordered. This is exhausting for people who already are juggling many other things in their lives.
Safe, secure housing is a human right, and poor housing affects all aspects of a persons’ life. The current system is broken.
We welcome the recognition and promise from Minister Jackson that Homes NSW must do better.1 Keeping this promise requires investment and a commitment to the public benefit of a healthy public and community housing sector.
In the NSW State Budget to be released on 18 June, and ongoing the NSW Government must commit the resources and sustained focus required to ensure this is possible.
National Reconciliation Week (NRW) invites all Australians to learn about our shared histories, cultures, and achievements, and to explore how each of us, be it individuals, families, communities, organisations or governments – can foster reconciliation in Australia.
The dates for NRW are the same each year; 27 May to 3 June. These dates commemorate two significant milestones in the reconciliation journey— the successful 1967 referendum, and the High Court Mabo decision respectively.
Under the banner “Now More Than Ever“, this year’s NRW theme resonates deeply.
Now more than ever, we need to tackle the unfinished business of reconciliation. We must stand up to defend and uphold the rights of First Nations peoples. To call out racism wherever we encounter it, and to actively reinforce the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples across this continent.
Reconciliation is about creating respectful relationships between the wider Australian community and Australia’s First Nations peoples. It is an ongoing journey that reminds us that while generations of Australians have fought hard for meaningful change, future gains are likely to take just as much, if not more, effort.
For the work of generations past, and the benefit of generations future, let’s seize this moment to pave the way for a fairer, more just, and reconciled country for all.
When it comes to reconciliation, each of us has a crucial part to play. Now more than ever, we need reconciliation.
#NRW2024
Every year, on 26th May, National Sorry Day (also known as National Day of Healing) is held in Australia to remember the mistreatment of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.
On this day, we commemorate Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who were forcibly removed from their families under government policies during the Assimilation era, officially 1910 to the 1970s. They were separated from their families and from country, kinship, and culture. These taken children have come to be known as the Stolen Generations.
On this date in 1997, the Bringing Them Home report was first tabled in Parliament. Bringing Them Home was the name given to the final report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission.
This report detailed the hardships endured by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and made 54 recommendations to redress the impacts of the removal polices and address ongoing trauma. The recommendations included a national Apology, reparations, improved services for Stolen Generations members and a process for monitoring the implementation of the report’s recommendations.
Two decades on and the Bringing Them Home report remains just as relevant because many of the recommendations are still outstanding. This has caused additional distress for many Stolen Generations members and there has been a ripple effect to current generations.
National Sorry Day is a day of remembrance and commemoration. It exists to give all Australians a chance to reflect upon the mistakes of the past and dedicate themselves to the great task of reconciliation; we can all play a part in the healing process for the people and nation.
We extend our respect to the Stolen Generations, and we acknowledge the strength and resilience of survivors, the ongoing grief and loss experienced by many individuals and families, and we recognise the pain and intergenerational trauma that continues.
#NationalSorryDay
#SorryDay
#NationalDayOfHealing
https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/projects/bringing-them-home-report-1997
https://bth.humanrights.gov.au/the-report/bringing-them-home-report