No-cause evictions have been banned in the ACT, which the government believes will give tenants greater rights and the opposition says will force property investors to leave the market.
Landlords will, from April 1, need to give tenants a reason - which can include intention to renovate or move back into the property before terminating their lease, following changes to the Residential Tenancies Act that passed the Legislative Assembly on Tuesday.
Landlords and agents will also be banned from encouraging rent bidding and tenants will be afforded greater freedom to grow food and compost scraps.
Landlords will also need to tell prospective renters whether a property meets minimum standards; tenants will be able to seek rent reductions or terminate the rental agreement if the property does not meet those standards.
Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury said there was a significant power imbalance between landlords and renters, which the new laws had sought to rebalance as fairly as possible and provide more detail on the rights and responsibilities of both parties.
"This should give tenants greater confidence in asserting their rights under the law. What we've seen in the past is retaliatory evictions, where if a tenant does seek to assert their rights under the law, they find themselves being evicted for no reason whatsoever," Mr Rattenbury said.
"This is a really important part of actually empowering tenants, particularly in a tight rental market where people are fearful of being evicted."
Mr Rattenbury announced in December 2020 he had begun discussions to ban no-cause evictions in the ACT, and introduced the legislation to the Assembly in November 2022.
Opposition housing spokesman Mark Parton warned in a Legislative Assembly debate the new laws would hurt the tenants they had been designed to protect, because it would result in landlords leaving the rental market.
"It will force more people into homelessness. ... [The government] knows this bill will make more people homeless, but they don't care," Mr Parton said.
But Mr Rattenbury said the Australian Housing Research Institute and other evidence from Victoria had found rents had not increased and property developers did not leave the market after the introduction of no-cause eviction provisions.
The territory's laws also ban no-cause evictions after an initial 12-month lease agreement, which is an Australian first.
Mr Rattenbury said it was important there was no point in the rental cycle where landlords would have access to no-cause evictions.
In other jurisdictions, landlords have end tenancies with no cause after 12 months to effectively return to market and avoid limits on rent increases, a loophole the ACT had sought to close, the Attorney-General said.
"If a tenant is not paying their rent, if they're damaging the property, if they have illegal sublet the property, if you need to move back in, if you need to sell the property - all of those reasons exist under the residential tenancy law. They're good, fair reasons why a landlord needs to manage their property," he said.
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