Social housing complaint handling – progress report

Foreword

Nearly two years ago, I tabled a lengthy report into Victoria’s social housing complaint system. I described it as complicated, confusing and under-resourced, to the point where some of the most disadvantaged people in our society felt their health and safety were at risk.

I acknowledged the Victorian Government is making a substantial capital investment in social housing, the impact of which will be years in the making. I said a tiny percentage of that investment, in good complaint handling, would reap huge rewards far sooner, for renters, social housing providers and the Government alike.

But while the responsible Department and the Housing Registrar took action to address the recommendations made to them, the major recommendations were for Government. Letters to a succession of responsible Ministers went unanswered, until a draft of this report elicited the response that the recommendations remain ‘under active consideration’.

Meanwhile, social housing complaints to the Ombudsman have risen 83 per cent over the past two years.

The systemic issues are not going away. Change is now even more critical, as Victorians grapple with dual housing and cost-of-living crises, increasing homelessness and an evolving social housing landscape, including the looming redevelopment of public housing towers.

People consulted in the preparation of this report universally expressed support for the yet-unfulfilled recommendations. They stressed the urgent need for these reforms in the current housing climate.

There was particularly strong support for the recommendation for a Social Housing Ombudsman, which I noted in 2022 could be established quickly and cheaply within the Victorian Ombudsman’s office. Our office’s conciliation team has already successfully resolved many complex social housing disputes.

Like a Royal Commission, I cannot enforce my recommendations. Unlike a Royal Commission, I can monitor and table a follow-up report. So I am doing so. I acknowledge social housing issues are complicated and inter-related. But the complaints issue can be fixed, and the time is now.

Deborah Glass

Ombudsman

Introduction

1. In February 2022, the Ombudsman launched an investigation into complaint handling in the Victorian social housing sector. The resulting report to Parliament was tabled in July 2022.

2. Social housing plays a vital role in society, providing homes for people unable to afford private rents and shielding them from homelessness. In Victoria, social housing includes:

• public housing operated by Homes Victoria, an entity of the Department of Families, Fairness and Housing (‘the Department’)
• community housing operated by publicly funded not-for-profit organisations, registered and regulated by the Housing Registrar within the Department of Treasury and Finance.

3. Most social housing in Victoria is public housing – making up about 75 per cent, with the remaining 25 per cent community housing.

4. People can apply for social housing through a shared waiting list known as the Victorian Housing Register. There were almost 51,500 outstanding applications for a home in September 2023.

Our previous investigation

5. Our July 2022 report to Parliament found the social housing complaint system was not working, and had not worked for years.

6. We launched our investigation off the back of complaints to our office from renters, many of which related to poor complaint handling by social housing providers. Similar concerns were raised with us by community advocates and other stakeholders.

All too often we receive complaints about basic needs such as running water and electricity, and reasonably maintained, clean and safe premises.

Victorian Ombudsman in 2022

7. At the time, the Victorian Government had announced its ‘Big Housing Build’ – a $5.3 billion investment in social and affordable housing, aimed at delivering more than 12,000 new homes across metropolitan and regional Victoria.

8. As part of the Big Housing Build, the Government commissioned a Social Housing Regulation Review (‘Social Housing Review’) to identify future regulatory arrangements to best support the long-term interests of social housing renters and communities. We liaised closely with the Review team, and our investigation report was intended to complement its findings.

9. Our investigation looked at whether complaint handling processes for public and community housing renters were:

• effective, fair and equitable
• sufficiently renter-focused.

10. We found the different complaint systems for public and community housing were complex, confusing, under-resourced, and in many places, ineffective and inconsistent. In particular, the Department’s complaint handling systems were sometimes failing to resolve simple matters, prompting frustrated and desperate renters to contact local Members of Parliament to resolve simple maintenance issues.

Regularly and repeatedly renters in public housing reported a broken complaint system. They spoke of experiencing delays and … sometimes, they reached the point where they felt their health and safety were at risk. The report confirmed this has been a longstanding problem that requires urgent reform.

Victorian Ombudsman in 2022

11. We also found that community housing renters had fewer options to escalate their complaints. While the Housing Registrar is responsible for registering and regulating community housing organisations, we noted its complaint handling function was limited and its role uncertain.

12. We also highlighted discrepancies in other safeguards for renters, such as those within the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) (‘Charter of Human Rights Act’) and Freedom of Information Act 1982 (Vic) (‘FOI Act’) which protect the rights of public housing tenants, but not necessarily all of those in community housing.

13. We concluded there was a pressing need for a fairer, more consistent, and simpler complaint process for all social housing renters.

14. We made a total of 17 recommendations aimed at improving and simplifying social housing complaint processes and addressing inconsistencies between public and community housing systems. This included six recommendations to the Department, four to the Housing Registrar and seven to the Victorian Government.

15. One of our key recommendations was that the Victorian Government adopt a single, two-tiered system for all social housing complaints, based on the principle of ‘local resolution, central escalation’. The proposed new system included the establishment of a Social Housing Ombudsman as a single external escalation point for all social housing renters. We noted this could be quickly and efficiently established as a new specialist function within the Victorian Ombudsman’s office.

16. Figure 2 provides a high-level summary of the 17 recommendations we made and the progress since. Appendix 1 to this report lists the recommendations in full, and outlines in detail what has been done so far to implement them.

This report

17. While the Department and Housing Registrar accepted our recommendations and have made good progress implementing them, the Victorian Government is yet to take any clear action, including on some of the most-needed reforms to improve renters’ experiences.

18. We have continued to receive an increasing number of complaints about social housing. The wide range of stakeholders we consulted – including community legal centres and other organisations advocating for and supporting social housing renters – told us not enough has changed and systemic reform, such as that recommended by the Ombudsman almost two years ago, is needed now more than ever.

19. This report sets out the progress made so far in implementing the Ombudsman’s recommendations, and highlights the urgent need for further reform to protect the rights of some of the most vulnerable members of our community. Case studies are drawn from complaints made to our office after our previous report. (Names have been changed and other details removed to protect the privacy of these people.)

What has changed

Recent developments

20. A number of things have changed since our July 2022 report, and there is now more pressure on the social housing system than ever before.

21. Victoria – along with the rest of Australia – is facing a growing housing crisis, made worse by a broader cost of living crisis. Homes and rental properties are becoming progressively less affordable, and homelessness is on the rise. The most recent available data, from the 2021 Census, shows Victoria has the second highest rate of homelessness in Australia, behind only the Northern Territory.

22. The Big Housing Build and other initiatives such as the Victorian Government’s $1 billion Regional Housing Fund will provide a welcome boost to social and affordable housing. However, a recent Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee Inquiry (‘Inquiry’), found Victoria has the lowest proportion of total housing stock allocated to social housing in the nation. Its report – The rental and housing affordability crisis in Victoria – cautioned that this issue remained ‘glaringly unresolved’ and that a major increase in social housing supply was urgently needed.

Victoria lags the rest of the country meeting the needs of its most vulnerable people, with the lowest proportion of total housing stock allocated to social housing in the country.

Legal and Social Issues Committee Inquiry Report (November 2023)

This is the most important moment in living memory to get housing policy right.

Submission to Inquiry

23. The Inquiry report made 34 recommendations to the Victorian Government, including that it commit to building 60,000 new social housing dwellings by 2034, with 40,000 completed by 2028. It also recommended the Government investigate enshrining the right to housing in the Charter of Human Rights Act – something the Ombudsman also recommended in our 2022 report. The Victorian Government has until May 2024 to respond to the Inquiry’s recommendations.

24. Recent data published by the Productivity Commission aligns with the Inquiry’s findings and shows that Victoria’s net recurrent social housing spending per person is lower than any other state in Australia (see Figure 3), and well below the national median.

25. The Victorian Government released a Housing Statement in September 2023 outlining its plan to tackle the housing crisis over the next decade. The Statement included commitments to:

• build up to 769 homes through the Commonwealth’s Social Housing Accelerator – in addition to 12,000 homes in the Big Housing Build pipeline
• demolish and redevelop all of Melbourne’s 44 high-rise public housing tower estates by 2051.

26. The plan to demolish and redevelop the public housing towers has drawn significant comment, with some stakeholders voicing concerns about impacts on displaced residents and the possible ‘destruction’ of communities.

27. Other concerns raised by observers about the planned redevelopment include:

• the minimal increase in public housing stock resulting from it, which falls well short of the number of homes needed to meet demand
• the potential that public land will be sold to private developers
• the socio-economic costs of temporarily displacing so many renters.

28. In response to a draft of this report, the Department noted there is support for the redevelopment plan, with some people (including renters) welcoming the opportunity for ‘more and better homes’. The Department noted renters participating in the first of the tower redevelopments had shown a ‘high level of engagement’. It said the first two towers to be redeveloped would remain public housing.

29. Further social housing system changes are also pending, with the Government yet to act on the final report of the Social Housing Review, which was completed alongside our previous investigation.

30. Although delivered to the Minister for Housing in May 2022, the Review’s final report has not been publicly released. We are advised it remains under consideration.

31. Key findings of the Review’s interim report , which was released publicly in December 2021, aligned with the conclusions of our 2022 investigation, including that:

• barriers prevent renters from making a complaint, with some unable or unwilling to exercise their rights, or unaware of them
• complaints and dispute resolution processes are complex and can be confusing
• some examples of good practice exist, but there are opportunities to improve complaint and dispute resolution processes
• neighbour disputes and maintenance complaints are key issues.

32. The Department of Treasury and Finance declined to provide a copy of the Social Housing Review’s final report to the Ombudsman while relevant Ministers were still considering it.

Complaints to the Ombudsman

33. Our public reports often lead to more complaints to our office, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect numbers. Yet the increase in social housing complaints to the Ombudsman in recent years has been particularly pronounced and shows no sign of dropping off (see Figure 4). This suggests renters are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with how complaints are being handled by social housing providers.

‘Every time I'll try talking to them, they just ignore my phone calls, never call me back, [I] send emails [and] they don't reply back … [They] are just dragging and dragging.

Community housing renter

34. Since December 2021, complaints to the Ombudsman about public and community housing have risen notably, even allowing for the 8 per cent increase in households living in community housing over that time.

35. In response to a draft of this report, the Department noted relatively fewer complaints were escalated by our office to it for a response – particularly for housing maintenance issues.

36. Our records nonetheless show public housing renters continue to face challenges trying to resolve complaints through internal pathways, even with the Department’s progress in implementing our recommendations (discussed in the next section of this report). This indicates further systemic reform is still needed.

The property is derelict … My rent is never late … I try and keep the home as tidy and as nice as I can. I have contacted maintenance several times. I've sent emails ... I'm at wit's end. My son has a serious heart condition, and my mental health is declining rapidly.

Public housing renter

37. The simplified two-tiered social housing complaint model recommended by our 2022 report would streamline and improve existing systems. Amelia and Jasmine’s stories show the importance of accessible internal and external review pathways for social housing renters:

38. Our ability to proactively engage with community housing providers about complaints and share information in the same way we do with the Department remains somewhat hampered, despite our 2022 recommendation to put to rest uncertainties about the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction to receive community housing complaints. This ongoing uncertainty can also sometimes delay or hinder the resolution of complaints from vulnerable renters, as the next case study shows:

Progress on our recommendations

39. Our monitoring shows both the Department and the Housing Registrar have made good progress implementing the Ombudsman’s previous recommendations, some key examples of which are highlighted below.

40. Some recommendations have been implemented in full, and others are on target for completion. Full details are set out in Appendix 1 of this report.

41. One important step taken by the Department was to commission an external review of its complaint handling in May 2023, completed in October 2023. This was the first such review of the Department’s complaint processes in six years, and our office appreciated the opportunity to participate. The review found that while the current approach had some strengths, it did not align with best practice. It made 25 recommendations for improvement, which the Department has started implementing.

42. The Department has also made efforts to improve its response to complaints about anti social renter behaviours, including:

• developing tools and providing training to staff to help them better manage anti-social conduct
• establishing a ‘Managed Rental Response’ pilot in December 2023, to provide supported transfers of some renters and reduce impacts on neighbours.

43. Nevertheless, anti-social renter behaviours continue to feature prominently in complaints to our office. Concerns range from harassment, verbal abuse and other inappropriate behaviour to criminal activity, including illicit drug use, assaults and property damage. The following story, about Xavier’s experience, is at the extreme end. It illustrates the challenges involved in handling these complaints and the need for the Department to proactively manage anti-social conduct. It also highlights the importance of an independent, accessible external complaints pathway for renters.

44. In response to a draft of this report, the Department said local housing offices ‘work to balance the sometimes competing needs and rights of renters to support tenancies and mitigate anti-social behaviours’. The Department noted it has introduced initiatives since the Ombudsman’s 2022 report aimed at improving its management of anti-social behaviours, which focus on early intervention, social landlord principles and being a model litigant.

45. Along with anti-social behaviour, maintenance issues continue to be another major source of complaints to the Ombudsman. Since our investigation, the Department has taken steps to improve maintenance services for renters, including establishing a 12-month ‘local maintenance crew’ pilot in January 2023. The Department said the local crews, staffed in part by renters, had responsibilities including completing low-level maintenance jobs and overseeing the quality of contractors’ work.

46. The Department told us the pilot had achieved positive outcomes and feedback, with 4,500 maintenance jobs completed between January and September 2023, an average two-day turnaround, and 98 per cent satisfaction among renters surveyed. The Department said the geographic reach of the pilot had expanded in both metropolitan and regional areas and would continue to be monitored closely, with further consideration and planning for a longer-term operating model.

47. The Housing Registrar has also taken steps to implement our recommendations, including the development of a model complaint policy for community housing providers. This policy was developed in consultation with key stakeholders, alongside our office, and has been in effect since July 2023. The Registrar reported that it has also developed complaint handling templates and guides in partnership with the Community Housing Industry Association Victoria (‘CHIA Vic’), with further work underway.

48. The Housing Registrar has also worked collaboratively with our office to resolve community housing complaints. The following story, about James and Sean’s experience, provides an example of a complaint the Housing Registrar referred to the Ombudsman for conciliation to avoid unnecessary escalation to VCAT.

The need for further change

49. The Department and Housing Registrar have taken positive steps to implement the recommendations of our 2022 investigation, with further work ongoing. This is pleasing to see, but more needs to be done to enhance and protect the rights of social housing renters.

50. The Victorian Government has taken no clear action in response to any of the seven Ombudsman’s recommendations addressed to it. For more than a year and a half, the Government failed to provide any response to the recommendations. Correspondence from the Ombudsman following this up went unanswered by the several ministers holding the Housing portfolio over recent years.

51. Only when the current Minister received a draft of this follow-up report was a response provided. This indicated the recommendations remain ‘under active consideration’, alongside the recommendations of the Social Housing Regulation Review’s final report (which, as noted earlier, is yet to be published). A full copy of the Minister’s response is included in Appendix 3 of this report.

52. Key outstanding recommendations include:

• adopting a single, two-tiered social housing complaint model to simplify the complaint process for renters
• clarifying the Ombudsman’s jurisdiction to consider community housing complaints
• considering amendments to the Charter of Human Rights Act to enshrine a right to housing and clarify its application to community housing organisations.

53. Until the outstanding recommendations are implemented – aimed at systemic rather than ad hoc improvements – we are unlikely to see significant change in the way social housing complaints are handled.

54. Importantly, the systemic issues identified in the Ombudsman’s 2022 report are not going away. Change is now even more critical, as Victorians grapple with dual housing and cost of living crises, increasing homelessness and an evolving social housing landscape – including the looming redevelopment of public housing towers and increasing reliance on community housing.
55. Stakeholders consulted during the preparation of this report – including community legal centres and other organisations advocating for and supporting social housing renters – universally expressed support for the yet-unfulfilled recommendations, stressing the urgent need for these reforms in the current housing climate.

For us we think it’s never been more important, both in terms of … the acute shortage of social housing in the state, but then also, this change process that’s going to happen [with the public housing tower redevelopment], which means more than ever we need those kind of improved policies, practices, complaint handling mechanisms and bodies for people in public and community housing.

Community legal centre

56. Stakeholders remain concerned about the unaddressed inequities for community housing renters – particularly in light of increasing reliance on this sector as an alternative to public housing. One stakeholder, noting the combined waitlist for both sectors, said it was ‘really important that whether people are placed into community housing or public housing, they’re not left worse off’.

[T]here’s never been more need for public and community housing … the housing crisis has drawn attention to it, but we’ve seen that growing need for a number of years, and I think what we want for renters is for their rights to be equal, whether in public or community housing, equally protected and supported

Community legal centre

57. Among the inequities continuing to face community housing renters are the fewer avenues available to them to escalate complaints. Some stakeholders expressed continuing frustration with the Housing Registrar’s limited ability to get involved in community housing matters.

58. One stakeholder told us they observed some positive changes in the Housing Registrar’s approach immediately following our report, but said in their view this had not ‘yielded any permanent outcomes’ in the way it handles complaints. Another stakeholder described the differing policies of each community housing organisation as ‘frustrating’ and said in terms of escalating complaints, ‘residents don’t feel as though the Registrar has any real power to do anything’.

59. In response to a draft of this report, the Housing Registrar said it has ‘fundamentally changed its complaints approach’ which had ‘resulted in tangible outcomes’, adding that it was doing as much as it could within the limitations of the existing regulatory framework.

60. Stakeholders expressed particularly strong support for our recommendation to establish a dedicated Social Housing Ombudsman as a single external escalation point, which they felt would help create a more consistent and equitable system for both public and community housing renters. As noted in our previous report, this could be established quickly and efficiently as a new specialist function within the Victorian Ombudsman’s office. Our office also has powers to resolve complaints using conciliation, which has proven successful in resolving many complex social housing disputes.

61. The new two-tiered complaint model would also simplify processes for renters and eliminate unnecessary double-handling of community housing complaints by the Housing Registrar and our office. Under this model, the Housing Registrar would retain its role monitoring systemic community housing issues that might need to be addressed through regulatory action. (In response to a draft of this report, the Housing Registrar said the current process is ‘very simple’ and asserted there is no double-handling of complaints ‘unless [the Ombudsman] elects to do so’.)

[E]ven though there have been some really genuine improvements and engagements in the sector around complaint handling, we do need a body like the Ombudsman recommended that can effectively deal with complaints, keep matters out of VCAT and work to keep people safely housed.

Community legal centre

62. Most stakeholders consulted generally felt public housing tenants are better off than those in community housing and some reported seeing improvements in the Department’s complaint handling practices since our previous report. However, as the Housing Registrar noted in response to a draft of this report, overall satisfaction levels generally tend to be higher among surveyed community housing renters.

63. Many stakeholders described recurring issues in public housing – similar to those frequently seen in complaints to our office – including delays in resolving urgent health and safety issues, maintenance jobs being left ‘half-completed’, and accessibility issues impacting complaints processes.

[F]or things that are quite urgent … [tenants] are literally being bitten and bleeding from bed bugs and they’re told “a fortnight, someone will come”

Advocate

What we generally see is that our public housing residents are treated like they should be grateful for anything that they are given. And that’s really distressing for our clients and our residents but it’s really distressing for our workers too.

Community legal centre

It’s just heartbreaking sometimes to hear about the conditions that people live in and just the way that they’re expected to wait, you know, times that people in private rentals would never have to … [and] in conditions that [private renters] would never have to live under.

Advocate

The sentiment and the feeling from residents around the lack of respect, how the Housing Office treats them and how their complaints are either handled or not handled is relatively similar … residents feel really fobbed off, they’re still experiencing high levels of … racism.

Advocate

64. In response to a draft of this report, the Department said ‘a concerted effort had been made by operational staff to improve their responsiveness to complaints’. It also said Department staff are committed to the Victorian Public Sector values and ‘strive to demonstrate these values across all interactions with … clients and renters’. The Department said initiatives were underway to promote cultural safety and ensure staff deliver a culturally safe service.

65. We also heard stakeholder concerns that the planned redevelopment of public housing towers was already affecting the Department’s handling of some maintenance complaints. Representatives of one community legal centre observed:

[B]ecause those buildings are going to be knocked down, [the Department] will do very basic repair work, but the client will continue to come back and make complaints.…[The Department] have said … to me a couple of times … ‘well, the building needs to be demolished’, and I’m just like ‘well, there’s still people living in it’.

66. In response to a draft of this report, the Department denied making any changes to maintenance service delivery across the towers and said it was ‘continuing to invest’ in them. The Department said this included the operation of Local Maintenance Repair Crews, which continued to support renters at these sites.

67. Stakeholders reported better and more timely resolutions when complaints are escalated to external bodies such as our office or local Members of Parliament. This further highlights the importance of an accessible and independent external escalation pathway such as the recommended Social Housing Ombudsman.

[I]t seems like [the Department] still need[s] that kind of umpire [like the Ombudsman] to progress it in a lot of matters.

Community legal centre

68. Advocacy and support organisations we spoke with described unprecedented demand for their services, in part driven by the housing and cost of living crises, as well as concerns arising from the planned redevelopment of public housing towers. They underscored the importance of accessible advocacy and support services for social housing renters, some of whom are unable to access complaint processes without assistance.

[Renters] feel fairly powerless so [they’re] unlikely to complain unless the matter is extreme or unless [they] have an advocate to assist [them].

Advocacy and support organisation

69. Funding to ensure the availability of advocacy services at all stages of the complaint process, as previously recommended, would help social housing providers better understand the needs of renters and ensure complaints are followed through.

70. The Department agreed in its response to a draft of this report that advocacy and support services are an important part of the complaint system. The Department said it is compiling advocacy information for renters, which it will upload to its website and intranet by the end of March 2024.

71. Many stakeholders we consulted also said they had encountered clear disrespect from social housing providers in how they talked about and treated renters, in turn affecting how complaints are handled. Several expressed strong support for enshrining a right to housing in the Charter of Human Rights Act – another outstanding recommendation of our 2022 investigation, and a shortcoming previously recognised by the Government almost 10 years ago.

72. Overall, the strong sentiment shared by all stakeholders we consulted, and backed by the complaints our office continues to receive every day, is that a pressing need remains for more to be done to improve the experiences of social housing renters.

Appendix 1 – Progress of recommendations implementation

Recommendations to the Department

AA

Recommendations to the Housing Registrar

Recommendations to the Victorian Government

Appendix 2 – Procedural fairness

73. This report includes comments and opinions that may be considered adverse to the Department, the Housing Registrar and the Minister for Housing. In accordance with section 25A(2) of the Ombudsman Act, we provided these parties with a reasonable opportunity to respond to the material in the draft report and have fairly set out their responses.

74. In accordance with section 25A(3) of the Ombudsman Act, any other persons who are or may be identifiable from the information in this report are not the subject of any adverse comment or opinion. They are named or identified in the report as the Ombudsman is satisfied that:

• it is necessary or desirable to do so in the public interest
• identifying those persons will not cause unreasonable damage to those persons’ reputation, safety or wellbeing.

75. This report includes case studies describing social housing renters’ experiences. Names have been changed and other details have been removed to protect the privacy of these people.

Appendix 3 – Minister for Housing response