international education
Rent market bullies
Landlord exploitation of international students
common, study finds.
By Kate Prendergast
I
nternational students are being deceived, scammed and
financially exploited by unscrupulous Sydney landlords, a UNSW
study has found.
The No Place Like Home report, released by the Human Rights
Clinic, paints a troubling picture of overseas students lured into
poor housing arrangements, with landlords taking advantage of the
lack of local knowledge and legal rights.
Some landlords demand that students pay higher than necessary
bonds, while others ask for more advanced rent than the law
allows. Withholding bond money is the most common problem
faced, with few international students receiving a bond receipt
despite the fact that issuing one is mandatory under law.
“My leasing agent sent me a letter saying the rent is $300 but it’s
going to be $420 from next month. You can leave the place, or you
can stay if you agree to this,” recalls one international student in a
focus group.
“I consulted the [university’s] legal services regarding this and
the lawyer said that they can’t do this … He drafted an email and
sent it to the agency. Within two days I received a reply saying, ‘We
are sorry for that, we are not increasing the rent.’ The same case
happened with three of my friends, but they chose to leave the
place because they didn’t consult a lawyer.”
Most international students arrange their accommodation from
their home country through informal channels (from Facebook to
Gumtree), making them even more vulnerable to scams.
Students who live in share-housing are particularly at risk,
the report found, as they are unprotected by formal tenancy
agreements under the Residential Tenancies Act. Given the Sydney
housing market’s prohibitively high cost of private rent for young
people, on top of work restrictions on student visas, international
students find themselves on the shadier margins of the rent market.
“Many international students pay money upfront to unverified
landlords they find online,” explains Maria Nawaz, lecturer and
clinical supervisor at UNSW Human Rights Clinic. “When they arrive
in Sydney and housing turns out to be much worse than advertised
or other things go wrong, they’re often not legally protected as
tenants and face barriers to getting help.”
16
campusreview.com.au
Harassment, overcrowding, unsafe environments, racial
discrimination and sudden evictions are among the other issues
international students face. Students in focus groups also told of
being forced to pay exorbitant costs for damages unrelated to
their stay.
Another egregious form of exploitation is ‘informal evictions’,
where a landlord will harass or bully a student, or make the
accommodation so intolerable as to make it impossible for them
to remain.
“Emergency accommodation is generally unavailable to
international students who are suddenly evicted,” note the report’s
authors. Without a support network of family and community
at hand, students can find themselves stranded or trapped
without recourse.
“These conditions seriously undermine international students’
physical, emotional and financial wellbeing, and in many cases,
their basic human right to adequate housing,” the report continues.
A student’s academic performance may also be impaired by
the confluence of stressful circumstances, with students often
experiencing multiple forms of exploitation simultaneously. If they
are forced to miss classes in a search for alternative housing, this
increases the financial burden on the student, and may even “lead
to the ultimate penalty of losing their visa due to unsatisfactory
course completion”.
As of 2018, there were 548,000 international students at
universities, vocational colleges, English colleges and schools in
Australia, a figure almost double that of 2013. Thirty-eight per cent
of this cohort is based in NSW, with 35,000 international students
studying in the Sydney local area. UNSW is particularly invested
in the welfare and support of international students, with the
latest audit report showing its overseas enrolment dollar outstrips
domestic student dollar.
In its conclusion, the report recommends several measures
to ensure secure, safe and affordable housing for international
students. These measures include providing more affordable
accommodation for international students, emergency support
services for those who find themselves without a safe place to stay,
and improving informational resources for prospective and future
students seeking accommodation.
The strongest recommendations put forward were a raft of
reforms for the underregulated marginal housing market, to
ensure transparency and accountability. The report advises two
task forces be created, one made up of “education providers,
local councils, NSW Fair Trading, international student groups and
tenancy/legal assistance services” and the other established by the
Commonwealth government.
Local councils need a centralised investigation system, the
authors write, and NSW needs a code of practice for commercial
student accommodation “to establish a clear set of standards
regarding quality and enforcement of tenants’ rights, and a related
accreditation process”.
It’s up to the courts of the Commonwealth and state to close
loopholes that are currently seeing landlords evade accountability.
The report also advises that the Residential Tenancies Act 2010
(NSW) and/or the Residential Tenancies Regulations 2010 (NSW) be
amended to “provide rights and remedies to the most vulnerable
tenants in the marginal rental sector, including international
students in share houses”.
The report can be accessed through the UNSW website. ■