Government must act on Coroner’s damning rooming house recommendations

On 1 October 2006, Leigh Sinclair and Christopher Giorgi died in a rooming house fire at 211A Sydney Rd, Brunswick. Five other residents, including a seven year old child, were lucky to escape alive. A few weeks ago Coroner Peter White found that, “These two young lives were lost against a backdrop, which included a failure in the administration of applicable building code fire safety, planning and rooming house regulations”.

The PILCH Homeless Persons’ Legal Clinic (HPLC) has welcomed the findings of the Coroner into Leigh and Christopher's deaths, and demanded that the Government act to implement these changes and save lives.

Many clients of the HPLC are rooming/boarding house residents, and the HPLC has long been concerned about the inadequate regulation of rooming house accommodation. The HPLC, together with the Tenants Union of Victoria (TUV) and the Council to Homeless Persons (CHP), were granted standing at the inquest to raise these issues. Specifically, the group highlighted ongoing fire safety problems and the lack of legislative protection of residents’ rights. The focus was on the need to improve the current regulation of rooming/boarding houses so that tragedies such as that which occurred at 211A Sydney Road in 2006 can be prevented in the future.

In his findings, handed down on 29 September 2009, the Coroner adopted seven out of eight recommendations put forward by the HPLC, TUV and CHP during the inquest aimed at improving public health and safety in rooming houses. Key recommendations included:

that rooming house operators must be licenced and, as a condition of these licences, they must meet a “fit and proper person” test;
that rooming houses be registered (and meet appropriate standards) if more than one room within a residential premises is offered for rent;
that Government agencies be given powers of search and entry to ensure that rooming houses comply with appropriate standards; and
that penalties be increased for rogue operators within the sector, who are putting residents’ security and safety at risk.

The Coroner has made strong recommendations aimed at protecting the vulnerable residents of sub-standard rooming houses. Now Government must implement these recommendations fully and without reservation, to ensure that no more senseless and tragic deaths occur in unsafe rooming houses.

The Coroner’s findings come just two months after the Premier John Brumby announced a rooming house task force to report to the government on new standards and enforcement processes for rooming houses. The findings of the report have not yet been made public.