Every family deserves a safe and secure home.
Western Australia is the only state that still evicts people for no reason.
It means that WA renters are the last in the country who can still be evicted into homelessness for no reason, with no chance to defend themselves.
And the WA government oversees hundreds of no grounds evictions from public housing.
Reforming WA’s rental laws to remove unfair no grounds evictions is the biggest single thing the government can do to address WA’s housing crisis.
Because unfair evictions are how people become homeless in the first place.
There’s currently multiple ways a family can be evicted without grounds - at any point during a periodic tenancy, or at the end of a fixed term tenancy. No reason needed, no evidence, no defence, no chance to fix any issues.
The devil is in the detail, and the government needs to remove both kinds of unfair no grounds evictions.
The Minister keeps saying that renters only get evicted if a magistrate finds they’ve breached the tenancy agreement, which the Minister knows is not true because WA is the only state that still has unfair no grounds evictions on its rental laws.
You wouldn’t send someone to prison without a trial. Eviction into homelessness can be a life sentence but too often it happens without any trial at all.
The impacts are profound and developmental: childhood eviction and homelessness is predictive of increased involvement with the youth justice, child protection and health systems, increased adult incarceration, barriers to education, increased health and mental health issues, and increased incidence of premature illness, self-harm and death.
In 2022 the Abraham family, represented by SCALES Community Legal Centre, started a class action complaint in the Australian Human Rights Commission alleging race discrimination in public housing evictions. A Federal Court Injunction prevents the Housing Authority from evicting the family while the Human Rights Commission investigates.
But families shouldn’t have to sue their own government, and we don’t need to wait for the Courts, we can build a good solution now.
WA government figures show that 58% of all WA public housing fixed term tenancies are imposed on Aboriginal families, meaning that hundreds of other affected families may join this racial discrimination case. Other families have been hit with extensive maintenance bills for damage they didn't create, which is often used to unfairly ban them from accessing housing - Aboriginal families are again affected disproportionately.
End Unfair Evictions is a community campaign that has come together to call for major change, and demonstrate that there are realistic, affordable solutions which will benefit all of us.