Law and poverty in Australia : Commission of Inquiry into Poverty Second Main Report, Chapter 3 Poverty and landlord - tenant law
- Commonwealth of Australia, October 1975.
- pp. 57-103
KEYWORDS: poverty; tenancy law
This chapter focuses on the legal problems faced by tenants of both privately and publicly owned residential accommodation. Tenants of both kinds are more likely to be poor than the rest of the population. On an income basis, without taking the cost of housing into account, 10.3 per cent of ' income units' renting private accommodation a re 'very poor'. This is only slightly higher than the percentage among all other income units (10.2). However after housing costs are considered, the percentage of private renting units who are 'very poor' rises to 12. 7, while among all other income units the percentage falls to 5.1. This relationship can be seen another way: although only 21.4 per cent of all income units are private renters, 40.8 per cent of all income units which are ' very poor' after housing costs rent private accommodation. Thus the cost of obtaining accommodation makes private renters more likely to fall into poverty than the rest of the population. In fact private renters are more than twice as likely to be in severe poverty, after housing costs, than other people.