How to make private rooming houses safe
Call This A Home? is calling on the Victorian Government to introduce:
- A set of comprehensive minimum standards to ensure the basic needs of all rooming house residents are met
- More effective registration, monitoring and enforcement to bring hundreds of unregistered rooming houses into the system and ensure compliance with standards
- A licensing system to regulate the management of private rooming houses to prevent exploitative practices
These are the 3 key reforms needed urgently to protect rooming house residents. The campaign has also developed a five point plan which can be downloaded here.
Long-term solutions
These short-term reforms are incredibily important to the thousands of Victorians living in exploitative private rooming houses but they are only the first half of the solution.
It is the severe lack of affordable, social and public housing supply that created the conditions where rogue operators were able to flourish.
Both Victorian and Federal governments have already taken steps to create new housing supply and these efforts should be commended.
There is a lot more work to be done in this area because it is the combination of effective regulation and adequate supply that will make the problems we see in Victoria's private rooming houses ended once and for all.
Click Take action and spend five minutes helping those in Victoria's most dangerous accommodation.