Slumlords squeezing tenants

This week’s Herald investigation  into foreign students exploited by ruthless landlords has exposed some brutally ugly facts of rental life in Sydney, including sexual blackmail, massive fraud and illegal development.

Tuesday’s Herald revealed that hundreds of family homes near universities have been converted illegally into quasi-boarding houses with unwary tenants – mostly foreign students –  crammed in, ripped-off and worse.

But it’s not just houses that are getting the Slumdog treatment. Flats are routinely converted into mini-units or multi-bed bunkhouses while owners corporations have to jump through impossible bureaucratic hoops to prevent it.

When the owner of a three-bedroom flat in Alexandria, illegally converted into five mini-units, recently faced legal action from his Owners Corporation, he ‘sold’ the flat to his estate agent, meaning his long-suffering neighbours would have had to start the whole process again. Only last-minute Supreme Court action halted the sale.

Minister for Citizenship and Communities Victor Dominello wants new laws to regulate bogus boarding houses.

But, with overcrowding and subdivision turning some of our biggest strata blocks into  luxury slums, Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts should also step up to the plate.

Both tenants and strata owners are supposed to be protected by Fair Trading and the Consumer Trader and Tenancy Tribunal.

Enough said?

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