#25617
JC
Flatchatter

    It seems ridiculous that possible new legislation supporting the recent NSW Parliamentary inquiry into holiday letting, together with the new Strata Schemes Management Act,  would mean 75% of the entitlement vote of owners could result in selling your building – forcing you to leave your home, and yet 100% of the entitlement vote of owners will not be able to exclude short term letting from your building.

    Like many others I find the recommendations of this report surprising and incredibly undemocratic.  My wife and I have ‘downsized’ to live in an apartment, as I’m sure many people will be doing in increasing numbers in the future.  If I had had any idea that I would be living in an hotel, not knowing who my neighbor might be tomorrow and having to clean up vomit and other things from my balcony on new years day,  I would have kept my 4 bedroom house – with three bedrooms unused, gone on the Pension, and enjoyed a quiet relaxing retirement, at the State’s expense.

    Recent findings in research by NSW Dept of Planning and Environment have found that many suburbs in Sydney have over 60% of households headed by a person over 65 with 2 or more bedroom unoccupied (SMH 22/10/2016 p3). It appears the State Government is trying to encourage these ’empty nesters’ to downsize, assumedly to a smaller house or apartment, to free up housing stock for young families.  If there is anything the State Government might do to encourage this transition it would not be to implement the recommendation of the NSW Parliamentary inquiry into holiday letting.

    I’m wondering if a ‘class action’ type approach could be used to tackle this issue. I’m assuming it might be feasible to have a very specific by-law drafted which challenges the basic principles of certain Parliamentary Inquiry recommendations.  If a large enough number of Owners Corporations implemented this by-law, then funded as a collective the defence when it was challenged, we might bring the fundamental unfairness of this report to a head.

    I’m not a lawyer, and not sure that any result would survive the implementation of laws resulting from the report, but I do believe there is a significant number of strata schemes with systems (including by-laws) in place that currently exclude short term letting, and their Owners Corporations might be interested in pooling resources to protect their quality of life.