A word from our CEO

We've long said that all tiers of governments need to better respond to the demographic realities of renting and not focus on home buyers to the exclusion of renters. It's encouraging to see federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers acknowledge the pain renters are facing when delivering his first Budget this week. ‘Rents are through the roof, and many families are struggling to keep up,’ he said.

Here, at Tenants Victoria, we see rental stress every day through the lens of our tenancy legal work and community outreach. We've just published our own set of numbers, in our annual report, demonstrating how important our grassroots legal-help work is as an early intervention measure to address the problems that lead to homelessness – and, yes, we urgently need more of it.

Jennifer Beveridge 
CEO, Tenants Victoria

Annual Report: check out our stats

Tenants Victoria's annual report for 2021-22 records our busy year helping renters. More than half a million people visited our website while our frontline lawyers and intake workers assisted almost 8000 renters and 400 community organisations on rental problems. 

Our handy map (above) shows how we’re reaching renters across Victoria.

Review our annual report.

Flood repairs 

If your rented home is damaged during the state’s wild weather and the landlord doesn’t undertake urgent repairs quickly – you have options!

See our website for more information on repairs.

Federal Budget: our view

We welcome that our national government is beginning to prioritise housing policy. This includes establishing a 'Housing Accord' and new investment of $350 million for the construction of 10,000 affordable homes over the 5 years from 2024. This is in addition to the new government's election promises. 

Addressing systemic housing affordability and supply challenges needs new ideas – and considerably more investment – in the years to come. The epicentre of housing pain is in the private rental market. 

Read more about the ‘Housing Accord’.

Ministers' announcement

Victoria's Consumer Affairs Minister, Melissa Horne, joined us this month to see our work to help renters in action. The minister took the opportunity to confirm $865,000 in grant funding over 3 years with a key focus on strengthening our efforts to empower renters from multicultural communities through targeted education about their rights.

Our team will also create new multimedia resources for all renters. The minister (second from left) is photographed with (from left) CEO Jennifer Beveridge, Community Engagement Advisor Alan Loow, Multicultural Communities Advisor Aguer Athian and Director of Community Engagement Farah Farouque.