A DEPUTATION from Frankston Council is for the second time thisa year seeking an urgent meeting with the Minister for Housing to thrash out concerns over public housing.
Councillors are frustrated at the lack of maintenance, serious anti-social behaviour by problem tenants and “deplorable management by the Department of Human Services” – and they want action.
Leading the charge is Cr Glen Aitken, who said the minister, Wendy Lovell, “would be made to listen” to the council’s concerns about anti-social behaviour which had been “going on for years”.
“Problem tenants have for too long caused untold misery to neighbours and massive damage to buildings – with taxpayers footing the bill,” he said.
“This is completely unacceptable and DHS must be made to account for allowing this to continue. I have seen lives ruined through the sort of anti-social behaviour that we will be talking about.”
Frankston and surrounding areas have 1906 DHS properties with nearly 1000 in Frankston proper. It is this heavy weighting of community properties in the one suburb – sometimes two rooming houses in the one street – that is causing problems.
Troublesome tenants are making life difficult for neighbours by trashing houses, screaming and fighting in public, intimidating those who object to their bullying and leaving rubbish and syringes on nature strips and in surrounding gardens.
When forced to leave they are moved to other – often nearby – public housing and the pain and suffering continues. It is this cycle that opponents are hoping to break.
The council will argue that there should be better reporting of problem tenants – as occurs in the private rental sector – so that when DHS inspectors have to be called the lease is deemed to be broken and the offenders evicted.
The councillors want a mechanism put in place whereby DHS checks on its properties more frequently, initiates a stronger reporting system, re-educates delinquent tenants and punishes those who continually transgress.
Bad behaviour would be documented and linked to future tenancy applications.
Cr Aitken said he would raise the prospect of punishing offending tenants with fines or even community-based orders as occurs overseas. “I know they lock them up in Holland,” he said.
Local action group FUNC – Frankston United Neighbours Connect – has devised what it believes is a winning strategy in the war against problem public housing tenants. “Basically we rally residents together to look after their own streets. They report unsociable behaviour and establish a presence,” said organiser Tracey Hopgood.
The eight-member group has lobbied the council and urged action against troublemaking tenants, generating a groundswell that will be felt in Spring Street.
“We are making headway. We rally all the streets with public housing and get the residents to look after their own street and report any problems,” she said.
Members compile diaries of unlawful behaviour and send each other texts warning of robberies and threatening behaviour.
“We’ve already had positive results in a short time in Daly St which has two rooming houses.”
The group believes it is unfair that Frankston has 39 rooming houses – with possibly another 15 unregistered – and more than one in several streets.
Neighbouring suburbs, such as Casey, has five rooming houses.
“Why is Frankston being saturated,” Ms Hopgood said.
“If each city had, say, 30, that would be 1200 overall and far more equitable.”
Residents of eight streets reportedly joined FUNC at a public meeting attended by 50 people at McClelland College, Karingal, on 29 May.
The group believes the council “should be able to have a say” on where rooming houses are allowed. And – with most tenants being single men – they should not be allowed near schools.
“If the council could say, ‘there’s already one in that street’, then any others would have to be put elsewhere,” Ms Hopgood said. “The same should be for DHS houses.”
Affordability has meant that most rooming houses have been set up in a corridor running from the middle of Frankston towards Frankston East. A loophole – which stringent planning regulations do not apply to those with fewer than 10 rooms –allows many to escape scrutiny and be established in any street.
Finlay St residents told the meeting about a purpose-built rooming house with nine rooms opening in a street where other rooming houses are already “causing disruptions to safety, health, and the wellbeing of residents”.
The residents felt the situation could only get worse.
Ms Hopgood said community housing needed to be “better planned and managed. Frankston should be able to say ‘no more, we are full up’.”
Another longtime Frankston resident said the area was being used as “a dumping ground”. He said the biggest problem was an “over-saturation of low income, troubled citizens”.
With drug use a constant problem, Ms Hopgood said eight methadone suppliers based near Frankston station was three times the number in neighbouring cities.
“This far exceeds the amount we need for our area but they are servicing people from other areas, like Dandenong, where the council is trying to clean up its streets,” she said.
“We are such a liveable place, but we are getting overrun.”
Ms Hopgood said her group was not blaming DHS or the council “but we should be working together to combat the problem”.
Frankston mayor Cr Darrel Taylor last month told The Times that Frankston was part of a Rooming House Working Group that included police, DHS, and Consumer Affairs Victoria which was working to establish an improved standard of housing for vulnerable people.
