Social Housing Tenants

The Tenants’ Union provides its services to and represents the interests of public and community housing tenants (sometimes collectively referred to as social housing tenants).

For information about the current review of the Tenant Participation Program click here

We utilise a number of strategies to identify housing policy and law reform issues being experienced by public and community housing tenants; we then incorporate this information into our work representing the interests of all Queensland’s residential tenants.

The following are some of the strategies the Tenants’ Union is currently employing to enable us to provide services to and represent the interests of social housing tenants:

  • A full-time Social Housing Worker is employed by the Tenants’ Union; currently this worker is Rebecca Fitzgerald.
  • We undertake travel to meet face-to-face with Regional Tenant Groups (RTGs); approximately 1-2 such meetings/trips are made per month.
  • Free state-wide tenancy advice and advocacy is offered by the Tenant’s Union to all tenants; the percentage of callers in the last financial year who were public and community housing tenants was actually higher than their representation in the broader tenancy population.
  • Communiqué: a news update for public and community housing tenants is a newsletter we produce and distributed to RTGs and other public and community housing tenant contacts once every two months. In this newsletter we provide relevant policy and law-related news, an update on Tenants’ Union activities and issues raised with government, community and industry bodies.The Communiqué includes a free mail-back questionnaire for you to let us know about any issues in your area.Any public or community housing tenants who are interested in receiving this newsletter are welcomed to forward their contact details to us via the special public and community housing insert in our brochure. (You can download this here.)
  • The Tenants’ Union’s Social Housing Tenant Reference Group is selected annually and meets every two months. This group is made up of four public and two community housing tenants who discuss and assist the TUQ with our social housing work. After evaluating this work, the TUQ expects to call for nominations for the next group later in the year.
  • The United Times is the Tenants’ Union’s quarterly newsletter and is only available to TUQ members. We include an article specific to public and community housing tenants in every edition of the United Times.
  • Tenancy fact sheets are available that are of relevance to all residential tenants. We are also presently working on a number of tenancy fact sheets specifically for public and community housing tenants. The first of these, Appeals, Reviews and Complaints, has just become available, with Am I a Social Housing Tenant? and Repairs following soon.
  • Open invitation to tenants to contact the Social Housing Worker with housing policy or tenancy law issues. We consistently welcome public or community housing tenants and tenant groups to phone, email, fax or write to us if they would like to draw our attention to a housing policy or tenancy law issue that is affecting a number of tenants. If the issue they raise is an individual tenancy matter then we can refer them to our advice service; if the matter is outside of our area of work then we will try and make a useful referral to another organisation; tenants need not hesitate to contact us.
  • Meetings with policy-makers where we can raise issues faced by public and community housing tenants. The Tenants’ Unionmeets regularly with senior bureaucrats in the Department of Housing to discuss issues regarding public and community housing.
  • Social housing policies and procedures training for tenant advocates. We provide specific social housing training workshops to Tenants’ Union staff (including regular updates) and other tenant advocates, such as Tenant Advice and Advocacy Service staff and homelessness early intervention workers. Also, a regular social housing-related article for the Tenants’ Union’s quarterly Bulletin, which is a tool for the professional development of tenant advocates. The intent of these services is so that tenant advocates are resourced to provide effective advice to public and community housing tenants when they access such services for help and advice.
  • Any residential tenants, including public and community housing tenants, are of course welcome to utilise the Tenants’Union’s free tenancy advice service.