Pet owners still struggling to find rentals despite law reform, advocates say

ABC NEWS (Australia)

The laws introduced in South Australia last year aim to make it easier for tenants to have pets in private rentals. But some rental advocates and pet shelters say it is making little difference on the ground, as renters continue to face high levels of competition amid an ongoing housing crisis.

Transcript

00:00A backyard to play in for Shadow and Hope, after their owner, Janita Milne, battled with

00:08housing instability for years.

00:10My two dogs are my world, they're my babies.

00:14Changes to South Australian laws last year mean landlords or agents can't ban pets, unless

00:20it's prohibited in strata or community title rules.

00:24Janita thinks it helped a bit, but it was still tough to find an affordable place to

00:28have her dogs.

00:29It made probably a small percentage of a difference.

00:34It's definitely making it a little bit easier.

00:39Rental advocates say while it's brought some relief for renters, the changes have only

00:43made a small difference in practice.

00:46Because landlords can still refuse an application for any given reason, there is still concern

00:52that those applications are being refused because people have pets.

00:56In shelters where capacity is limited due to increasing surrender numbers, cost of living

01:01pressures and rental challenges continue to bite.

01:03There's been a nearly 2.5% increase in people needing to surrender their dogs in that time,

01:08so year on year since that legislation was brought in.

01:11The legislative reforms were among a suite of changes which also ended no-cause evictions

01:16and increased the notice for ending a fixed tenancy from 28 days to 60 days.

01:21Minister Andrea Michaels says so far they've received positive feedback on the changes.

01:26We really haven't seen many complaints from either tenants or landlords and when we introduced

01:31this we did think there might be some backlash, but I think we did strike the right balance.

01:37For Janita, she hopes these legislative changes are just the start.

Category

Transcript

Recommended