RATS AND MICE PLAGUE FAMILY

Marika Dobbin Published: August 20, 2012

MELBOURNE'S escalating rental affordability crisis is making tenants and their children sick with respiratory infections, scabies, headaches and depression, a state government inquiry has been told.
A mother and her children have been paying $350 a week to sleep in a corner of their lounge room because mould had spread through the house and over their belongings, causing headaches and sinus infections.
Another family of five, including a newborn, are paying $300 per week to live in a home infested with rats, littered with rat droppings and no heating, no hot water in the kitchen or bathroom sink, and no lock on the door.
The Tenants Union of Victoria has presented multiple cases of rental stock in the private market that is making tenants sick and depressed.
It has called on the state government to legislate for minimum standards in rental properties, such as heating and running water, similar to regulations it will introduce for rooming houses next year.
''Melbourne is now so unaffordable that renters are pushed into unsafe and unhealthy accommodation,'' policy worker Mike Williams said. ''People with few choices are then exploited by slum landlords and unscrupulous estate agents who are not complying with their duties to maintain properties.''
Melbourne is experiencing a record shortage of cheap private rental homes, with just 0.3 per cent of new lettings (or 26 homes) deemed affordable to singles on Newstart, according to Victoria's housing department's latest rental report.
It is a dramatic drop on the same quarter in 2000, when 13 per cent were considered affordable. The union says the numbers hide the human toll, with housing fundamental to health and wellbeing.
In one case, a woman suffering recurring chest infections is paying $947 a month for a single bedroom apartment in the western suburbs where the real estate agent and landlord have refused to fix black mould that is growing thick on the walls.
In another case, a woman suffered an outbreak of scabies and became too ill to remain living at home after a real estate agent refused to clean up a mould infestation.
A spokeswoman for the government said it was not responsible for the private rental market.
The government is holding a review of Victoria's public housing sector to prepare a strategic framework for social housing.
It has announced millions of dollars in budget cuts to the Social Housing Advocacy and Support Program, a move that welfare agencies Wesley Mission Victoria and HomeGround said would increase homelessness and place further strain on the affordable private rental market across the state.
The union included information about high levels of financial stress, depression and illness in the private rental market, as part of its submission to the social housing review.
A recent Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute report said physical comfort was a basic precondition for ''feeling at home'' and that households that rent faced psychological and health effects from having a lesser degree of control over their living environment.

This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/domain/illness-and-depression-grip-families-in-rental-crisis-20120819-24gmi.html