Vendettas

Much has been written about the incompetence of Housing staff - mostly anecdotal and credible. It is rare that there is solid evidence and rarer still that Housing is held to account.

This article from Tenants NSW crossed my desk recently and, on the surface, it looks like just another drawn-out maintenance issue with buck-passing and inept handling, but when you dig a little deeper you can see that a 14 YEAR fight with Housing is more than just a floundering, useless, bumbling bureaucracy.

One line stood out - screaming from the rooftops:
“There can be no basis for describing the long-standing and continuing breaches by the respondent [FACS - LAHC] of the several orders of this Tribunal as casual, accidental or unintentional.”

What does that mean exactly?
It reinforces what every tenant knows - that Housing staff act with malice.

That staff choose to ignore Tribunal rulings; choose to ignore policy and law; choose to leave vulnerable people in danger and nothing will make them behave otherwise.

This behaviour is supported at every level of Housing - a practice which is fostered and encouraged.

And even though the FACS secretary wrote an apology letter, nothing on the ground has changed.

This is just ONE case where the tenant had the strength, the mental fortitude and tenacity to follow this through the courts for 14 YEARS and Housing were caught with their pants down.

This is not the norm. The norm is a Housing philosophy of harassment, badgering, ignoring, gaslighting ... where the tenant is worn to a frazzle and gives up. They either give up and live in squalor with mould or broken windows or busted security doors; or they give up and move out because the cost of having secure housing is too high.