ABC News have reported that documents revealed under the Freedom of Information act show quite a large amount of rent is owed by public housing to the ACT, most of it from the southern suburbs.
The Freedom of Information request also asked for the number of tenants facing termination orders but the request was denied, saying it was unreasonable to manually search the records of each of Housing ACT’s more than 11,000 tenants.
The documents also reveal Housing ACT spent $88,000 in 2011-2012 on legal retainers to deal with residential tenancy matters, increasing to $110,000 this financial year
Shane Rattenbury says that this is not the result of some epidemic of public housing tenants not paying their rent.
We receive 99 per cent of the rent that we charge public housing tenants,” he said.
“These figures are comparable to the private sector rental market and we’ve also got a program where a tenant who does get four weeks behind in their rent or with a debt exceeding $500 is required to enter onto a payment plan.”
The FOI documents are available here.