In 2009, 40 organisations in Melbourne, Australia launched the Call this a home? campaign for safe rooming houses in Victoria, seeking to reform the private rooming house market.
Contents
In Victoria, a rooming house is an accommodation similar to single room occupancy or bedsitting in other countries in which residents pay for the use of a room, sharing facilities including the kitchen and bathroom.
Calls for regulation
The campaign was centered on a need to improve regulations of the rooming house market, pointing out that there were no minimum rooming housing standards and that rooming house operators were able to operate for maximum profit and pay little attention to safety and security of their residents. The campaign claimed the growth of this problem was due in part to a lack of affordable housing options for low income households.
Call this a home? called on the Victorian Government to introduce:
- A set of comprehensive minimum standards to ensure the basic needs of all rooming house residents are met
- More effective registration, monitoring and enforcement to bring hundreds of unregistered rooming houses into the system and ensure compliance with standards
- A licensing system to regulate the management of private rooming houses to prevent exploitative practices.
Results so far
Since the Call this a home? campaign started, the following progress has been made:
Statistics
The 2006 Census recorded approximately 4,500 people living in Victorian rooming houses, mostly in suburban Melbourne. This figure is likely to be under-reported.