Monday was International Tenants' Day! We're genuinely excited by all of the renters' rights movements around the world today—rent controls in Scotland, rent freezes campaigns in NYC, legislation for leases in South Africa, & many more—and hope you too feel buoyed by the wins for renters everywhere.

Last week, the National Association of Renters' Organisations and National Shelter released a report following up on the Better Deal for Renters. The Deal has now been in place for two years—has renting gotten any better?

🔥 IT'S BACK: To mark International Tenants’ Day, we’re launching another season of our Renter Lab citizen science project! We’re opening applications for Renter Researchers in NSW to help us track just how unbelievably hot renter homes get in the summertime.

You've probably seen the patronising "Market Tip Monday!" video from a Barry Plant property manager by now. It explains how tenants need their rent raised a teensy bit at every possible opportunity, so they don't get spooked by how expensive rents are elsewhere when you eventually evict them.

The ACT decision to make a housing a human right in the territory is great—but it has to mean something. If we call housing a human right and then continue to not provide it to every human, that's worse!

Back in July, we made a submission to the ACT Legislative Assembly in support of a bill that would recognise housing as a human right in the Territory. Yesterday, that legislation passed, which is great! Every single person should have a safe, healthy, affordable home.

📰 Extra extra! The first dispatch from our letters-to-the-editor blitz has hit newsstands everywhere! 🌟 Our successful writer was Madeline: you may remember her as the renter who went to Parliament with photos of her ceiling, which had collapsed overnight & took months for her landlord to fix.

We're still poring over the National Climate Risk Assessment that was released this morning, but it's already clear that our homes are not ready for what's coming.

We ran a little long on this one, but hear us out!

We're happy to finally see some discussion of landlord debt as a factor in the rental crisis: our housing system encourages landlords to overleverage themselves now, simply so that they can profit from selling a house later.

You've probably already seen the recent tragic story about father Matthew Lorenzon fixing up his landlord's garden so the property, his home, can be sold after he and his family have been forced to vacate.

We were horrified by the rhetoric around the housing crisis displayed at rallies across the country over the weekend. We stand with and for renters, whether you’ve been in Australia for a day or your entire life.

📬 Don't forget! If you want to use your experiences of renting to help advocate for tenants' rights, join our cabal of letter-writers & help us flood our papers with renter stories! Join our WhatsApp group here: bit.ly/BR-letters, or send us an email at [email protected] to get started!

The Economic Reform Roundtable began yesterday: members of the Productivity Commission, the Reserve Bank, economists, and MPs are going to spend three days trying to figure out how lift living standards and worker productivity.

You might have seen a headline cropping up today about "Sydney landlords giving away 'free rent'" and how we're in a renters' market now.

📣 We're looking for renters and renter allies to join our crack team of writers!

🙃 Just kidding! No we aren't. We all know rents can only go up, preferably by as much as a tenant can possibly bear! 🏛️ The RBA has actually published research indicating that rents on average have almost no relation to the cash rate at all, being controlled entirely by supply and demand.

The ACT's Rent Relief Fund has provided renters with more than 1,600 grants since its inception—that's 1,600 households who were able to continue living in their homes. Despite making such a significant difference for so many people, the fund cost only 0.02% of the ACT's 2025-2026 revenue to run.

✂️ NSW Liberal senator Andrew Bragg has put forward a motion to revert the government's tax cut for foreign investors in build-to-rent housing, saying that the housing model only drags out "the Australian nightmare of lifelong renting over the Australian dream of home ownership."

It's Homelessness Week. While our work is oriented towards renting and tenants' rights, we think it's clear that the rental crisis is one of the driving forces of the homelessness crisis. When property owners make rents less affordable, and when social housing supplies are cut, homelessness rises.

🏙 We're proud to have stood with @rahunion.bsky.social, public housing residents, and other housing advocacy organisations this weekend to protest the demolition of 44 public housing towers in Melbourne!

If short-term rentals like AirBnb have affected your housing, ability to rent, or homes in your community, Everybody's Home wants to hear from you! Take their quick survey on the effects of short-term rental housing here: www.surveymonkey.com/r/CHN7W2C

Our deputy director Bernie talked to CHOICE about rent-bidding this week: real estate agents continue to solicit bids for rents above the asking price, even in states where that's against the law.

One of our frequent volunteers, the incredible Andrea, was on ABC News last week to talk about how renters bear the brunt of energy inefficient homes!

The NSW govt wants to walk back rental reforms after introducing them just a few weeks ago, now allowing landlords to evict tenants on the grounds of major renovations to the home without providing any evidence that renovations are actually happening, providing an easy loophole for unfair evictions.

Everybody's Home released a new report today on the relationship between the decline of our social housing system and the broader rental crisis. They find that while, over the past decade, rents in capital cities have increased by nearly 57%, social housing stock is disappearing.

We're happy to see the NSW government has introduced a bill that would require REAs to disclose when their listing photos are AI-generated! Our CEO Angela spoke to The Daily Aus to voice our support for similar measures nationwide—read the full article at buff.ly/S0Yv9Zu!

Time's running out to make your much-appreciated donation to Better Renting before the financial year runs out!

Our CEO Angela spoke to ABC News Canberra about why the Rent Relief Fund is so important: it provides crucial stability for renters so they can think about something other than whether they can keep a roof over their head.

Yes—it's another EOFY fundraising ask—and Better Renting wouldn't be asking if we didn't really need to.

We asked our email subscribers what renters most need action from their new government—and renter justice orgs like us—on now that federal election season is over. Their answer? Rental laws! Want to weigh in on what you think is most important? Here's a little bit more about each option:

A rare heartwarming renter story from the ABC today: checking in on how renters in social housing are going five years after Vic's laws were changed to allow renters to keep pets in their homes.

Live in Darwin? Interested in energy issues for renters? Come hear our Deputy Director Bernie talk about energy costs and solutions for Sustainable House Day! Come to the Environment Centre NT Nightcliff Space at 9AM, Saturday 31 May. RSVP here! ➡️ www.coolmob.org/events

The National Housing Supply and Affordability Council's State of the Housing System report released last week revealed some disturbing renter statistics, including a finding that renters are almost twice as likely to live with major structural problems in their home as homeowners are.

Everyone's sharing the three bits of propaganda they won't get caught falling for today—here are ours:

Our CEO Angela went on ABC Illawarra to talk about the suite of NSW rental reforms that came into effect Monday and why renters' rights can't be seen as less important or normal than the rights of people who own property.

📣 A QLD renter is calling for renter justice after being abused and harassed by her landlord for months, saying a landlord register would help to arm renters with information and ease the unfair renter-landlord informational asymmetry.

We're very excited about today's end to no-grounds evictions in NSW—this is a hard-won victory that we've been fighting for alongside our renter volunteers & partner orgs in NSW for years! We're glad to see NSW join other states in starting to take renters' rights seriously.

You may have caught last week's news that the ACT's Auditor General found no compliance measures have been taken to ensure landlords adhere to new standards for ceiling insulation. Our deputy director Bernie spoke to ABC Canberra about the issue—listen below.

Correction: The AHURI director cited in the piece is Michael Fotheringham, not Ben Phillips.

The Guardian published an article yesterday citing claims from a researcher that the rental crisis is "overblown."

Now that the election's over, we're hanging up our green and black Renters' Election hats and dusting off the old Better Renting blue and orange, but maybe not for long...stay tuned for something exciting in the not-too-distant future✨

Our meta-goal for this election was for renters to visibly work and vote together as a bloc—the ABC seems to think that's happened! Their post-election breakdown includes a whole section on renters as voters (and shows how renter voter preferences are clustering). We love to see it ☺️

We're so excited to introduce Better Renting's new CEO, Angela!

With all the election day furore, we almost forgot our then-acting-CEO and one of our star volunteers spoke to Al Jazeera about housing/renting as political flashpoints for the election—looks like the results bore us out!

Our volunteers in Lyons are braving the chill to share renting policy info with Tassie voters ❄️

Happy polling day! We are posted up at polling places in Sturt, Bradfield, Bennelong, Ryan, Lyons, and Curtin handing out renter scorecards--come say hello! (Pictured is our Sturt setup; more to come!)

⏰ You know what time it is: election time, pledge time, vote time, renter time, all of the above! ⏰ Let's make it happen—check our renter scorecard and policy page before you head to the polls tomorrow so we can win this thing 🎉 we can't waste this moment!

SA Greens have established a select committee to investigate the damage short-term rentals like AirBnb have done to long-term rental affordability.

We can only fix renting by voting to fix renting, not by cranking the property prices treadmill up to 11 and waving sadly at the people who are still renting in ten years time. Being pro-renter means making renting better, not by trying to get a few less people to rent!