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Illawarra and South Coast Tenants Service says: Make Renting Fair

Warren
Illawarra and South Coast Tenants Services team leader Warren Wheeler has featured in the Illawarra Mercury, calling for legislative changes to stop unfair evictions. "A landlord will give a no-grounds notice, they don’t have to justify why they’re evicting the tenant, and as long as the notice is given correctly the Civil and Administrative Tribunal must terminate the tenancy."
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Make Renting Fair – community support growing

Make Renting Fair
Make Renting Fair is a new community campaign to end unfair evictions. Bringing together a strong coalition of local community organisations, unions, and faith based organisations, the Tenants Union of NSW and Tenants Advice and Advocacy Services are calling on the NSW State Government to make renting fair, and ensure renters in New South Wales are protected against unfair evictions.
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Residents' committees

Committee
Residents’ committees are a common feature of residential land lease communities and they have an important role. They can be a voice for residents, a source of information and support and the conduit between the operator and residents of the community. Many committees carry out a number of functions and some have sub-committees for particular purposes, for example to organise social activities. The Residential (Land Lease) Communities Act (the Act) sets the rules around residents’ committees.
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How site fees are increased

Outasite article
It feels like every time we write an article about site fee increases in land lease communities we refer back to the review of the legislation and the fact that this was the biggest issue raised by park residents at that time. The Residential (Land Lease) Communities Act 2013 brought a new approach to site fee increases and new measures that the Government said would alleviate the pressure of constantly increasing site fees. In this article we will look at how site fees are being increased and the potential impact on home owners in the short and long term.
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The benefits of assignment

Outasite article
In the last two issues of Outasite we have written articles about the assignment of site agreements. We have talked about the value of the right to assign, the campaign to keep that right and why we think NCAT got it wrong in the Farraway case. However, there is still some confusion, so in this article we will unpick the law and unpack the issues.
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Ron McLachlan: Resident Advocate

Ron and colleagues
Ron McLachlan is a former park resident and long time advocate for residents’ rights. He is a member of the Residential Parks Forum and Port Stephens Park Residents Association. We asked Ron to tell us about his life as a park resident and advocate.
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Community rules clarified

Advertisement from a Land Lease Community owner’s website
The Residential (Land Lease) Communities Act 2013 (the Act) brought many changes to land lease communities (residential parks) and one of the biggest was in the area of community rules. How rules are made and what they can be about has not changed significantly but who they apply to and how they are enforced has.
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Site maintenance: Who's responsible?

Outasite article
We never thought we would have to explore the question of responsibility for site maintenance because the answer seems so obvious – the operator owns the land so they have to maintain it. But that assumption is being challenged by some operators who are attempting to pass on significant repair and maintenance costs to home owners, exploiting what appears to be poor drafting in the Residential (Land Lease) Communities Act 2013 (the Act).
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Tales from the Tribunal

NCAT
The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal (NCAT) hears disputes between land lease community operators and residents. Decisions that NCAT makes about disputes are not binding on other NCAT Members who hear similar disputes but they can provide guidance so it is useful to know what NCAT has decided about a particular issue.
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What is the Residential Parks Forum?

Rod and Margaret Nicoll – members of the Residential Parks Forum 
The Residential Parks Forum brings together advocates and lawyers from across NSW to share information and advocate for improvements to the rights of land lease community residents.
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