Jenny Leong zooms in on the rental crisis ahead of March election

By ERIN MODARO

It’s amidst one of the city’s worst rental crises that Sydney moves into the upcoming state election. When Jenny Leong was elected to represent the brand-new seat of Newtown in 2015, she was already well aware of the housing issues that inner-city residents face.

“Advocating for rental rights for tenants is something that I’ve been doing since before I was elected,” Leong said.

The MP has been with the Greens for over a decade now, having previously worked with Amnesty International and as Manager of Community Arts and Cultural Development at the Australia Council for the Arts.

Leong is very familiar with the electorate she was chosen to represent- both the smallest and one of the most progressive- having lived, studied and worked in the inner-city for over 20 years. Newtown, with its long-established LGBT+ community and blossoming collection of funky vintage shops and cafes, is home to an eclectic mix of Sydneysiders.

“The electorate of Newtown… has at its heart the desire to want to really have a positive and significant influence on shaping not just the way that we do politics in our community in our local area, but also how we do politics across the state across the country,” Leong said.

On top of a drive for social change, Newtown residents are unified by another key statistic; nearly 2/3 of people living in the electorate are renters. 59.2% of people living in the electorate are tenants of landlords, with another portion making up the blocks of public and social housing that has marked inner-city Sydney for decades. In fact, the Newtown electorate has the highest proportion of tenant dwellings in the state.

Leong said that during her most recent campaign, she listened to a multitude of stories from renters facing difficult situations.

“It’s impossible to door knock and or to have conversations with people on the street, in Newtown or anywhere across our city, and not hear a story that someone has of a rent hike and unfair eviction or  completely unacceptable treatment that they’ve experienced from a landlord,” she said.

Over the last year, rents in Sydney have seen their steepest ever annual growth. One Redfern resident was slapped with a $700 fortnightly rent increase last month. Vacancy rates are at an all-time low, with many renters facing tough competition to be approved for properties.

According to Domain, only 0.8% of rental properties were available to lease nationally in January.

Relief for renters

For Leong and the Greens, bringing relief to renters who are struggling is a top priority.

“I will move on the first day back of Parliament a bill to freeze rents in New South Wales,” Leong said.

She said she wants to “create the space for a longer conversation about implementing rent controls, establishing an independent body that has oversight of those issues”.

The Greens are looking to establish an independent body to have oversight over rents in NSW- a measure that will be adopted to swing laws in favour of renters.

“The reality is that our laws are set up to favour the rights of big investors and property developers over the interests of people that rent in our city,” Leong explained.

Ending no-grounds evictions, where landlords in NSW have the right to evict tenants with no cause (in many cases which they employ to significantly hike-up rents), has been a key focus for the Greens since 2014. A bill introduced to NSW parliament last year that would outlaw this practice was shut down by both Labor and the Coalition in November.

“Talk is cheap,” Leong said at the time. “Renters are the ones who will pay the price.”

Australia is in fact lagging behind other countries when it comes to renters’ rights, as it represents the only OECD nation to still allow no-grounds evictions.

Tenancy laws manifest in and around Newtown in observable ways. Leong says it’s often hard for renters to stay in one home long enough to settle into a community.

“The impact on our local communities… is that people aren’t in a position to be able to put down roots in a community,” she said.

University students are moving back home to live with their parents, families are forced to relocate many times just to find affordable housing.

“That’s not healthy for society.”

Chipping away at public housing

Leong is not only focusing on relief for renters- she is also zooming in on the looming issue of the sell-offs of public land, and a quickly diminishing supply of public and social housing in the inner-city.

On this issue, Leong said that “The Greens position is very clear. We believe that any sell-off of significant amounts of public housing on public lands needs the approval of Parliament.”

Leong is referring to a slew of new developments on blocks of publicly owned land in Redfern, Glebe, Waterloo and Eveleigh, where the government has fast-tracked rezoning processes and sold public land to private developers to build high-density housing.

In most cases the current government has employed a 70/30 model, where 70% of the new high-density housing will be private, and the remaining 30% is left designated for social, affordable and public housing.

The issue with this model for Leong is that it “involves the reduction of the amount of public housing, and it does not include an integrated plan for how they’re going to increase transport and active pedestrian pathways.”

On top of that, Leong criticised the lack of planning for social infrastructure such as schools and community services.

The Rezoning Pathways Program, introduced last year, allows for large planning decisions to by-pass local councils. Planning Minister Anthony Roberts announced the rezoning of 10 major sites across Sydney, one of which was a block of public housing on Explorer Street in Eveleigh.

Sydney’s Lord Mayor Clover Moore criticised the state government’s take-over of planning decisions for the site, and sent a letter to the planning minister requesting that control over Explorer Street decisions be handed back top council.

“There are examples just locally in Redfern where we know that there are rezoning and development plans being put in place through a state significant development process that actually have been rejected multiple times by council, and opposed by the community because of safety concerns of how high the building could be built on that site,” Leong explained.

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet described the rezoning pathways program as “one important lever that we are pulling to get the ball rolling on more housing supply across our state”.

Leong said that inner-city residents know they can expect to live in areas with a significant amount of high-density housing- however, this is not the issue that communities have raised.

“Yes, we absolutely need to recognise that development is going to happen in our city, but it needs to be happening in the interests of the community, not in the interest of the property developers who for too long have been getting special treatment from successive governments.”

In regard to supply, Leong said that pre-pandemic NSW had record levels of housing supply while simultaneously seeing record levels of homelessness.

“Supply alone does not solve the problem” she said.

Time for a change

For the Greens, the discussion around housing lies in shifting the conversation.

“We need to have a reshaping of the way we’re approaching housing in this state,” Leong said.

“And that means ensuring that we are putting the interests of people to have a safe, secure, sustainable and affordable home over and above the idea that investors should be able to profit out of other people’s misery.”

For young people who are facing a future where they might never be able to buy into the housing market, Leong said that renting should be just as viable as owning property.

“The solution in part is for actually us to be upping significantly the amount of public social and affordable housing but also improving the rights of renters, so that people don’t feel that owning their own home is the only way they can have housing security,” she said.

“The balance is tipped so far in favour of the landlord that the only way to escape the hell of greedy landlords, dodgy investors and horrific treatment by real estate agents is to try and own your own home.”

Leong said this March offers a real opportunity for NSW to put the Greens in a place to represent what the community wants.

“I think there’s a there is a real opportunity this election to not just kick the Liberals out, but actually to see stronger Greens representation in the Parliament, and potentially hold a balance of power that pushes a future government in the direction that our community wants to see.”

The Greens remain in a strong position to retain the seat of Newtown, and are fighting hard for neighbouring electorate Balmain as longstanding Greens MP Jamie Parker steps down. Kobi Shetty, a current Inner West Greens Councillor, is vying for this seat for the Greens.

On a positive note, Leong said that she sees a real sense of positivity from her constituents, even in the face of rising rents and cost-of-living.

“What is so wonderful about our community is that almost nobody is disengaging with a sense of hopelessness.”

Leong is running against Labor candidate David Hetherington, Liberal candidate Fiona Douskou and Sustainable Australia candidate Christopher Thomas for the seat of Newtown in the March 25th state election.