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Urbanism researchers at the University of Sydney (USYD) have launched a new creative project to reimagine the traditional power relationship between landlords and tenants.
Researchers from the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at USYD have launched a cutting-edge project to empower tenants amidst an increasingly hostile rental market.
The project, called Know Your Landlord, takes what its creators describe as a “disruptive approach to tenants’ advocacy” by projecting a rental market where tenants can access as much background information about their landlords as their landlords know about them.
“Australia’s rental landscape is disproportionately skewed in favour of landlords,” said Associate Professor Dallas Rogers. “Renters often give up an alarming amount of personal data just to secure a place to live.”
Dr Rogers stated that the project, which was developed in partnership with tenants’ unions from NSW, Victoria and Queensland, “seeks to recalibrate this imbalance and show that a fairer future is possible.
Know Your Landlord is a website that the research team developed as an advocacy tool to “bring attention to the large amounts of data collected on tenants and the inequality of the rental sector”.
The website uses government data and open listing data to display anonymised profiles of landlords with “particularly problematic or private issues” – issues which they would generally be hesitant to disclose to prospective tenants.
Rent hike history, maintenance checks, health and safety, accessibility, evictions, bond management, financial capacity and mortgage stress are all data points that Know Your Landlord reveals to tenants in these hypothetical profiles.
For landlords, the website also provides an “end-to-end solution” for empowering ethical property managers, including training, spot checks and accreditation.
Jack Toohey, a popular content creator who assisted the research team with promotion, stated: “There’s a pervasive belief in Australia that inability to access quality housing is a reflection on an individual, which really could not be further from the truth.”
“By teaming up with academic experts to create educational and engaging content, we hope to bring awareness to the fact that housing is a systemic issue, not an individual one, and an issue that can – and should – be changed,” Mr Toohey said.
The project comes in the wake of growing concerns about rental affordability across Australia, with recent research by REA Group finding that rentals priced at $400 or less had plummeted 50 per cent in the last year.
According to Domain, the number of homes required to ease the rental crisis equates to a city the size of Newcastle, with rock-bottom vacancies pushing prices up.
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