Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 2. 7th March 1973
TPA Doing Governments Job
TPA Doing Governments Job
Next comes the rent increase. In the past TPA could rarely do anything about this. Now the government has introduced the right to appeal rent increases. The regulations are not completely satisfactory. Many tenants do not realise, and cannot be persuaded that it is an offence for a landlord to evict them because they appeal a rent increase. TPA is now trying to do the job the Government is not doing by publicising the scheme.
The nastiest and most immediate attack that landlords make on tenants is the forced eviction. By law, unless the tenant agrees otherwise (and more on that later), a landlord cannot force a tenant out of his house without a Court order. Some landlords respect the law. Many others do not. If a landlord enters the tenant's house to throw him out and does so, he is committing the crimes of trespass, and probably assault and theft into the bargain. Yet the Police refuse to intervene to tell the landlord to go away. Lately they have taken a sort of benevolent "neutral" attitude, and just attempted to tell the landlord to be reasonable. In fact their duty is to arrest the criminal just as in any other case. On some occasions in the past, and probably still when TPA is not around, the Police have assisted landlords to throw tenants out of their houses.