By MELISSA MEEHAN
SLUMLORDS beware.
The City of Greater Dandenong has you in its sights and is making no apologies.
With only 90 registered rooming houses and hundreds more illegally operating in the city, the council is facing an uphill battle.
Director of city planning, design and amenity Jody Bosman said the council had no problem with registered rooming houses, but illegal set-ups put the put the public in danger.
He said the council was willing to “bump heads with these cowboys” to ensure the safety of their residents.
“We are not just doing it for the sake of it,” Mr Bosman said.
“There are lives at risk.”
The official description of a rooming house is when four or more unrelated people live under the one roof.
There are two official classifications of rooming houses, 1b which is a dwelling that has rooms rented out to individuals and a Class Three, which is a purpose-built facility with more than 10 people living under the one roof.
Mr Bosman said that the council generally had no problems with Class Three facilities, but the biggest problem was with the unregistered 1b rooming houses.
“These are the ones that are difficult to find,” he said.
“We rely mostly on complaints from other residents and once we hear about it we must follow it up.”
The council’s manager for building services, John Prendergast said the major concern was the fire risk of unregistered rooming houses.
“We generally have a problem with older housing stock which are sometimes used as these rooming houses,” Mr Prendergast said.
“They often have no heating or air-conditioning and they are almost not suitable for habitation.”
To overcome some of these issues, Mr Prendergast said residents often overloaded electricity outlets which often short-circuited and started fires.
He said that is why it was important that registered rooming houses had smoke alarms in every room.
His colleague Geoff Fraser said another issue was public health, with only one shower for up to 10 people making a disease outbreak a possibility.
“These are why we are targeting these illegal rooming houses,” Mr Fraser said.
“It’s all the risks involved – but it doesn’t mean rooming houses are all bad. We have a number of registered rooming houses that have been running since the ’40s and ’50s and others that have a shorter history and we would show case them as best practice any day of the week.”
“It’s just the slumlords that target the uninformed and place them in danger that we are trying to stop,” Mr Bosman said.
Residents who think they might know of an illegal rooming house are asked to call the council on 9239 5100 to make a report.
What are the signs of an illegal rooming house?
• Four or five excess cars parked
• A number of mattresses going in
• Sheets instead of curtains
• Front doors left unlocked
• Rubbish bins taken and stolen
• Excess shopping trolleys
