Rent rebates: Danger for Housing NSW tenants

The Housing Amendment (Tenant Fraud) Act gives Housing NSW (formerly Department of Housing) new powers to investigate public housing tenants who receive a rental rebate, and new powers to recover rebate monies incorrectly credited to tenants.

The Act also creates a new offence where a public housing tenant intentionally fails to notify Housing NSW of a change in circumstances that affects their rent rebate, punishable by three months imprisonment. Housing NSW will be the prosecuting authority for this and other offences relating to rent rebates.

Public housing tenants who have been incorrectly claiming a rent rebate can notify Housing NSW under a temporary amnesty that will run until 1 October 2008. Tenants who notify under the amnesty are protected from prosecution and proceedings to recover the monies. The amnesty does not apply to public housing tenants who are already the subject of an investigation by Housing NSW.

The TU has expressed concerns that many cases pursued by Housing NSW as ‘fraud' are instead cases where there has been a mistake – by the tenant or by Housing NSW – or where the tenant's circumstances simply do not fit well with Housing NSW's policies, or where the tenant is the victim of violence or oppression. The TU will be consulting with Housing NSW to try to ensure these sorts of cases do become caught up in Housing NSW's new powers.

Housing NSW (Department of Housing) checking tenants get right rent rebates

If you are a Housing NSW tenant you probably get a rent rebate . The rent rebate reduces the rent you pay to about 25 per cent of your household income.

To work out how much your rent rebate is, Housing NSW uses the information you give them about:

• your income (how much and what type of income)
• the income of any other person living with you.

If you give Housing NSW the wrong information, or if things change and you do not update your information, you will get the wrong rent rebate.

If you give them the wrong information on purpose so that you get the wrong amount of rebate, this is called rent rebate fraud . This is a crime.

If Housing NSW thinks you are getting the wrong rebate, they can:

• stop you getting the rebate
• check if you owe them money from the time you started to get the wrong rebate.

If you do owe them money, Housing NSW can:

• take you to court to get the money back
• end your tenancy.

It does not matter if you are getting the wrong rebate on purpose or not, they can still stop you getting the rebate, check if you owe any money and get this money back, and end your tenancy.