Maintenance
What's happening?
Public housing in New South Wales has been neglected by successive governments. Tenants are forced to wait weeks and sometimes months for urgent repairs to make their homes habitable.
Action for Public Housing hears maintenance horror stories daily. Diana* went without hot water for seventeen months due to the lack of response and substandard maintenance work. Jane* lived with a hole in her roof for three months due to repeated defective repair work. David’s* water heater exploded and flooded his apartment five months ago and his damaged floor and cabinets still haven’t been fixed.
Even routine maintenance like cleaning gutters is rarely if ever conducted. This leads to more serious and costly defects. Numerous homes sit vacant because they have been allowed to fall into disrepair.
The Minister for Housing and Homelessness, Rose Jackson MLC, has rightly labeled the Land and Housing Corporation “the scummiest landlord in the state” due to their neglect of public homes. Public housing tenants deserve better.
Yet the Land and Housing Corporation continues to pay millions of dollars to private contractor Ventia to deliver slow and substandard work. Privatization reduces service quality – as we’ve seen with everything from buses to energy – and the maintenance of public housing is no different.
What are we doing?
Our petition has three demands:
First, we call on the NSW Government to cancel the contract with Ventia and bring maintenance back in government hands. The Land and Housing Corporation should be directly accountable for maintenance. This would bring NSW in line with recent changes to public housing maintenance in Victoria.
Second, we call on the Minister for Homes to commit the Land and Housing Corporation to completing urgent repair requests within 24 hours and non-urgent requests within 14 days. When this is not possible, tenants must be offered suitable alternative accommodation for the duration.
Finally, we call on the NSW Government to double maintenance spending to $1 billion per year. Public housing tenants deserve decent homes. And there should be no vacant public housing during a housing crisis.
*names have been changed to protect tenants’ privacy
Maintain, repair and renovate public housing! – Action Network