My Family have been Exemplary Public Housing Tenants for Twenty two years in Rental Credit for twenty years. Eversince we made complaints against a local Housing office Manager for taking Thirty six weeks to access our Rental rebate assessment and also a complaint about another Manager for sending a contractor without any Prior Notification whatsoever, they have both tried to find any excuse to make our lives difficult.
I am elderly and have two adult children one with a Disability. For years we have put up with Dept.of Housing bad service. These are currently the problems we are having to put up with:-
1/. For seventeen years our Rental statements used to be like bank statements each page showing a letterhead each page had Tenants names, home and postal address, Rental Account Number, Rental receipt numbers, Rental Statement Number Rental Account Barcode all vital information. Since we Tenants took the Dept.of Housing to V/Cat a few years ago for several issues,like not carrying out maintenance etc. Soon after we were sent a Rental statement saying Same Information New Look which was False, as all vital information had been removed, No Letterheads from pages two onward, no Tenants names, no addresses, no rental receipt numbers no rental account numbers, no rental statement numbers and now no rental account Barcode, so Whos Rental statements are they? We have made complaints to the Dept.of Housing Heads who refer our issues to their subordinates who do nothing but give you the runaround.
2/* For seventeen years we were receiving Automatic Rental statements every Three Months from Local Housing office, and Automatic Rental statements from Head office in Melbourne city every Six Months, Now we are Not receiving any Automatic Rental Statments, knowing full well what the Dept.of Housing are trying to do we emailed and asked for Automatic Monthly Rental statments which is being ignored.
3/*We have requested copies of Reconciliation of all of our Rental account payments dating back over twenty two years etc as we have never received this, the Dept.of Housing Tenancy Management Manual clearly states Tenants can request this yet we received a letter stating you can check your Rental receipt payments with your Rental statments, well thats clearly hard to do when we are Not receiving our Rental statements. Only when the Ombudsman is involved they send out one statement with two payments missing we emailed and asked why were they not included and No reply.
4/*When we attend the Local Housing office to hand in copies of important documents like Tenant to Landlord Breach documents, Consumer affairs Excessive Rental increase documents etc. Example a few years ago our weekly rental was increased by $53-00 per week when I asked the Dept. in an email what is the maximum increase that the Dept.of Housing can increase Rent No reply whatsoever. The Dept.of Housing prefer to Stamp our documents at the back which are Blank, we explained that we must send copies of these documents to V/cat and Consumer affairs and they must see proof of what we have handed in to The Dept.of Housing. We made Complaints to Vic.Ombudsman Office against the Dept.of Housing and we asked for a senior investigator to handle our case and yet a Junior investigator is assigned and asks stupid questions like Why do you want your documents stamped at the front instead of the back? Why does she think Stamps were invented? The Victorian Ombudsman Office doe Not conduct fair investigations you send in detailed specific complaints about the Dept.of Housing and your emails are not acknowledged for up to Eight weeks, no response no notification as to who is handling your case so one wonders have they read all our emails then when the Vic.Ombudsman office finally respond after reminders they state we sent you this on email to the wrong email address we had on file (which is over ten years old and must have been dug up from the archives) they ignored the email and postal address I sent them, so in twelve weeks only two questions were asked out of the over Ten various complaints against the Dept.of Housing so after twelve weeks ignoring our request to send us copies of all corespondence that the Vic Ombudsman sends to the Dept.of Housing and send us copies of all corespondence received from the Dept.of Housing, well that was ignored and No contact at all for twelve weeks except this one email which was sent to us Via another email from an ACTING manager for the day stating answer her two questions in the attached email. Then we received twelve weeks later a seven page error filled letter stating you have four business days to respond to this letter and the Junior investigator officer( if you can call her that) in that same letter it states I have given a copy of this outcome letter to the Dept of Housing. WITHOUT waiting for us to Respond to her error filled letter which from pages two onward no letterheads from a government agency. Also the Vic.Ombudsman long story short opened two file numbers for the same complaints case against the Dept.of Housing so as to dilute the case, V/cat did the same thing opened up two file numbers for same case, ignored and did not want to see our video evidence ignored the evidence presented, and V/cat and Vic.Ombudsman misinterpreted us in outcome documents example when we took the Dept. to V/cat years ago one of the issues was that the Dept.of Housing had taken Three and Half YEARS to repair a Gaping hole as big as a fist caused by the Dept.Contractors well V/cat placed Gaping Hole finally filled after 3 and half DAYS. Also I we explained to V/cat that their Contractor stated "the roof was in good condition" and the member misquotes me in his report and wrongly states that we said that, and when I called the SES to check the roof they found three cracked tiles caused by Hail, so we quoted what the Dept.contractor stated. So Long story short this is the kind of misconduct that us as part of the Victorian Community have to put up with and thats why the Dept.of Housing are continuing to get away with breaching their own policies and the RTA laws. In past years we have called the Consumer Affairs to inspect maintenance not carried out by the Dept. and the Consumer affairs inspector arrives speeds through our home doesnt bother to get on the roof doesnt take photos of all that we pointed out and doesnt place the proper name to parts of the roof example report stated Gap in roof to be repaired then stated beading to be repaired well the proper name is Scotia on the roof then in the report it states V/cat to asscess whether something to be done. Which ever agency you make a complaint about the Dept.of Housing to cover up for them because there is gov.au at the end of their name, from our experience with certain government agencies they pass the buck you make a complaint to the Victorian Inspectorate office against the Vic Ombudsman office for unfair handling of our complaints and inspectorate office find an excuse not to investigate even though we provided evidence in attachments and requested he call into his office the Vic.Ombudsman officers so we may question them in front of the the Vic.Inspectorate ignored this request, we actualy looked up online and the Vic.Inspectorate office has NOT investigated any cases in a number of years.
5/*For many years each year The Dept.of Housing have increased our weekly rental. This year when we involved the Ombudsman
