19th November 2021
If you are a residential tenant who received rent relief from your landlord during the COVID19 lock down, a support payment is available to help reduce your rent in arrears.
Importantly, this money doesn’t go to you, it goes to your landlord, so why should you bother applying as a tenant? Because it will reduce what you owe your landlord in unpaid rent in the event the landlord doesn’t apply for this themselves. Read on.
The Residential Tenancy Support Payment is aimed at reducing the amount of rent owed by the tenant to the landlord. A tenant can now apply for a support payment of up to $4,500. If granted, the payment will go directly to the landlord’s account or agent’s trust account. The payment will come directly off the amount owed by the tenant. The Landlord will not be able to ask the tenant to repay the amount covered by the support payment.
The idea behind allowing tenants to apply, as well as their landlords, is to help clear rental arrears accrued during the moratorium transitional period and hopefully avoid disputes and recovery action for rent and charges.
A landlord can make a claim for either this payment or the COVID-19 land tax benefit (which is an offset of the land tax liability equal to the rent reduction granted), but not both.
Who can claim?
To be eligible, a tenant needs to demonstrate that they are a member of a household impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic and had rental relief during the lockdown.
An applicant is eligible for this payment where:
- there is a residential tenancy agreement with a tenant/landlord. As proof, you will need a rental bond number and/or a written tenancy agreement
- the tenant is an eligible COVID-19 impacted tenant. Click here for more details
- the property that is the subject of the application is the tenant’s principal place of residence
Next Steps
Making a claim for the residential tenancy support payment has been simplified. You no longer need to provide a rent variation agreement to make a claim, and there is now a digital consent form so everything can be done online.
Should you meet eligibility criteria, your next steps are:
- Contact your agent or landlord to discuss options
- Provide evidence that you are a COVID-19 impacted tenant
- Provide consent to provide details
Full details of what to do next can be found here.
To lodge an application for the support payment, click on this link.
Claims for the residential tenancy support payment close on 31 December 2021.
As always, we are happy to talk through the details if you have any issues navigating the fine print.
