With so many South Australians locked out of home ownership, long-term renting is becoming the new normal for more and more people. Between a quarter and a third of South Australians are renters and this number growing every year. With this comes a growing need for affordable and secure long-term rental properties.
Sadly, our current rental laws are inadequate and the system is skewed in favour of landlords and against people who rent.
The ability for landlords to easily evict people for no good reason causes great uncertainty and stress, especially for families with school-age children, who can't be sure where they are going to be living in a year's time. Others live in a climate of fear of being evicted, discriminated against or “blacklisted” if they speak up about repairs or other issues with the property.
People should be able to live in a quality home that is safe and comfortable, with their pets and long-term security of tenure.
The Greens want to redress this imbalance and give South Australian renters better rights and protections.
We want to hear your stories and lived experience of renting in South Australia. By sharing your renting experience, you can help us convince the State Government that the law needs fixing, now!
If you want to be kept up to date on this campaign, please keep the "send me email updates" box ticked so we can send you the occasional update.
SHARE YOUR STORY BELOW
We have been renting for just over 4 years due to change of circumstances and finding it extremely difficult to find a rental property that allows pets. We have 2 large dogs, well behaved, desexed and microchipped and until recently an elderly cat as well.
We have found a number of landlords unwilling to compromise and in all circumstances we are not entitled to obtain a reason why and the owners would rather leave a property empty than take someone with pets even though we both work full time and good references.
In the last couple of years I have increased the rent amount put on an application to try and obtain a lease even though a substantial bond is paid.
Now my kids are grown and i am animal free.
I would like a cat and a dog or 2 cats, they prolong life, they reduce stress, and they have every right to have a home like humans do.
There is a lot of mental health issues today and pets help to make changes in this.
im not sure of the statistics but one third of the population cannot buy there own home, should we not be allowed a pet because of this?
My story right now is, my kids are all grown up and moved out our family rented home I stayed with my son for 18 months trying to find a place that would allow me to have a cat, during 8 months of hard looking daily not one came up.
The rental market if full of extreemly uninhabital homes that landlords think we should pay top dollar for yet still not allowd animals
The unit im in now wants to know if i even get a gold fish lol seriously this was stipulated to me while handing my bond over.
In another place, mould spores were literally growing out of the ceiling. Again, the landlord refused to fix it. We didn’t want to make a big deal out of it as we wanted our lease renewed.
In another place I lived, the airconditioner broke down. It was so poorly insulated that the house was like a sauna during summer. We had to keep pushing the real estate agent to fix it, it took 12 months before the problem was remedied. All the while, we were paying rent for a property that had been advertised as airconditioned.