Tonight on abc730: There's nothing illegal about the conditions Charles Pratt is living in. In most Australian states and territories, landlords do not need to provide heating or cooling. ellencoulter
abc.net.au/news/it-reached-39-degrees-inside-charles-rental-home/102052042"You're sweating all the time," he said. "I'm often exhausted. I don't sleep well at all. I'm always dehydrated."
There's nothing illegal about the conditions Mr Pratt is living in. Like most Australian states and territories, landlords do not need to provide heating or cooling in Western Australia.At his own expense, Mr Pratt has installed a portable air conditioning unit and shade sail.But he can't afford to run his air conditioning overnight.
He's paid by rental advocacy group Better Renting to speak publicly about tracking temperatures and humidity at his home.They tracked 77 private rentals and social housing properties across the country and found that temperatures were above 25 degrees, 45 per cent of the time, with some homes reaching maximum temperatures well into the 40s.
"And for myself, I suffer from chronic depression. And it gets extremely stressful around this time of the year trying to debate, do I have it on? Or how am I going to pay the bill?" "And the fact that we do see such heat in social housing properties, issues with humidity and mould as well, is certainly an indictment on the governments that haven't been addressing this," he said.
She said she would like to see the SA Housing Authority inform public housing tenants that they might be eligible for improvements under the maintenance program. Professor Emma Baker from the Australian Centre for Housing Research at the University of Adelaide agreed. "In Australia, we tend to put the lowest income people in the poorest quality homes that are then the most expensive to heat," she said.For private rentals, Victoria and Tasmania have minimum standards requiring some form of fixed heating in a main living area, but no jurisdiction mandates minimum cooling standards.
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