Joey Warren with his grandmother in 1944.
Even after the property changed hands,Warren continued to pay the same rent.
The developer engaged an expert who calculated market rent as at April 2023 at $548 a week. But the magistrate rejected that analysis.
‘Protected tenant’
Warren is one of a dwindling number of NSW residents who is a “protected tenant” under since-repealed legislation,passed in 1948,which retained wartime rent control measures.
Joey Warren’s Catherine Hill Bay home.
Under those laws,there were restricted grounds for eviction. “Fair rent”,rather than market rent,was calculated with reference to the capital value of the property on August 31,1939 – the day before World War II started.
The magistrate in Warren’s case estimated the property would have had a basic rent of 5 shillings a week in August 1939. Ultimately,he fixed fair rent at the current sum of $50 a month.
January 1986 cut-off
From the mid-1950s,premises have been gradually “decontrolled” in NSW,so that the 1948 protections no longer applied. No new protected tenancies were created after a cut-off date of January 1,1986.
While the 1948 law is no longer in force,the2018 law repealing it kept the old provisions alive to protect the small number of protected tenants in NSW who have been living in their homes since before the January 1986 cut-off.
In 2006,the NSW Court of Appeal found a man at Lithgow was a protected tenant of acottage on former mining land.
By the numbers
- Exactly how many protected tenancies still exist in NSW is unclear,the NSW Parliamentary Research Service saidin a 2013 report. But the figure is low.
- All buildings constructed on or after December 16,1954,are exempt.
- “A register of protected tenancies was established from October 1989 to June 1990. It had a low response rate,with only 570 tenants coming forward,” the report said.
- “In 1960,there were 207,000 controlled dwellings in the state,representing approximately two-thirds of all private rentals. The 1989 Government Housing Committee Review estimated that the[1948 laws] applied to an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 tenancies in the state.”
University of NSW Emeritus Professor Brendan Edgeworth said that,in 1947,“demographically there was a lot of support for rent control”,partly because 47 per cent of Australians were tenants.
In the 2019-20 financial year,31 per cent of households rented their homes,according to Australian Bureau of Statistics data.
The law formerly applied to “pretty much all private residential tenancies”,he said,and some commercial tenancies.
The wartime regulations expired in 1948 and “it generated a lot of political discussion”,Edgeworth said. There was a federal referendum that year to amend the Constitution to give federal parliament the power to regulate rents. That referendum failed,but the NSW government enacted its own law.
The Minns governmenthas committed to ending so-called no grounds evictions on fixed and periodic leases.
Warren’s case “evokes many of the current issues and debates surrounding the protection of tenants and security of tenure and the control of rents”,Edgeworth said.
‘Important protection’
Tenants’ Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said:“We see this as a really important protection for this group of people who have been in their homes for a very long time.
“Joey is an exemplar of that,where you’ve got three generations of family and more than a century’s history. A lot of the protected tenants are similar.
“They’re almost exclusively now elderly people who really would struggle to find a home in the private rental market.”
Tenants Union of NSW strategic litigation solicitor Cass Wong and Joey Warren outside his Catherine Hill Bay home.
The union’s strategic litigation solicitor,Cass Wong,who acted for Warren,said that “Mr Warren,now 80 and of declining health,gets to keep his home,which has been in his family for over 100 years”.
The serenity
Sue Whyte,Warren’s friend and co-president of the Catherine Hill Bay Progress Association,said:“The houses of Catherine Hill Bay tell the history of the mining town. These houses are priceless.
“Catherine Hill Bay is one of only two state-listed heritage townships in NSW.”
In a final allusion to The Castle,the magistrate said the protections “allow Mr Warren the opportunity to continue to enjoy the ‘serenity’ of his home for his remaining years”.
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