Four tenants a day losing their homes
By Megan Lloyd
Bailiffs evict an average of four tenants a day in South Australia, a figure which has doubled in the last five years.
More than half of those tenants have had their bonds and rent arrears covered by the SA Housing Trust, which was spending about $4 million a year on lost bonds and tenant debt, some of which was not recovered.
"The trust is a major underwriter of the private rental market in SA", Housing Evictions in SA, a recent study of bailiff-assisted evictions, co-author Michele Slatter said.
The study was commissioned by the SA Housing Trust and Flinders University to chart the changing relationship between SA’s private and public rental market since the mid-1900s.
"I was shocked by what we found", Ms Slatter, a Flinders law lecturer said.
"More people are being decanted into private rental where once they were housed by Housing Trust and had more secure housing.
"We are seeing a lot more vulnerable and precarious tenancies.
"While private rental market works well at the upper and middle end, in terms of the more disadvantaged it’s not working"
Other findings include:
• More than 1000 people are involved in bailiff-assisted evictions each year
• About 84 per cent of those in 2001-2002 were from private tenancies where the rent was up to $150 a week
• The median length of stay in private rental is seven months and 26 months in a trust house.
• Rent arrears account for 90 per cent of evictions.
• A third of those evictions involved the Residential Tenancies Tribunal.
• Only 25 per cent of those tenants appear in the tribunal despite the risk of losing their home.
• Seventy-three per cent of private rental properties involving bailiff-assisted evictions are professionally managed.
A second study later this year will focus on the experience of eviction.
Housing minister Stephanie Key attacked the Federal Government for a "catastrophic" $10 million housing budget reduction to SA.
"Because of the anticipated shortfall in the next Commonwealth State Housing Agreement, this state faces the prospect of having to sell 1120 dwellings a year to maintain the viability of the remaining properties" she said.
