About Us

We are a community campaign
We know that when everyday people in our communities come together and organise, amazing things can happen. Make Renting Fair is all about supporting and empowering renters to push for the changes they want to see in the NSW renting system.
Campaign partners:

The history of Make Renting Fair

Make Renting Fair NSW was launched in July 2017 to demand NSW government listen and act on the urgent need to improve security for renters. Initiated by the Tenants' Union of NSW, the campaign ask was simple: to remove no grounds evictions from NSW tenancy law.
Working together with over over 90 community organisations, unions and faith-based organisations Make Renting Fair has had some fantastic successes.
  • We got people and the media talking about the impact of unfair ‘no grounds’ evictions and the need to end them.
  • We raised the problem of ‘no grounds’ evictions directly with decision makers from across Parliament, with key political parties including NSW Labor and NSW Greens adopting a renters’ rights platform and committing to end 'no grounds' evictions.
  • We took action on social media, undertook targeted letter writing campaigns, and collaborated on a 2000+ people strong Town Hall Assembly with Sydney Alliance, Vinnies NSW and Everybody’s Home.
  • In 2023, after the NSW Labor party won the election we continued to apply pressure on the government to make good on their election promise of abolishing no-grounds for both types of tenancy agreements and replacing them with a set of prescribed reasonable grounds.
  • After many months of lobbying and extensive consultations with the NSW Rental Commissioner and Fair Trading, in October 2024 the amendments to NSW Residential Tenancies Act Bill passed in the NSW Parliament.
  • Following the Bill passing, we spent months providing advice, feedback and suggestions in the process of finalising the Regulations for the new rental laws.

    • On Monday 19th of May 2025, the new laws came into effect, making no-grounds evictions officially a thing of the past. On that day, new regulations regarding applying to keep a pet and instituting a requirement for fee-free ways to pay rent were also introduced.

    The future of Make Renting Fair

    Revising our campaign priorities

    The MRF campaign has played a critical role in pushing for this long-overdue change to laws impacting a third of all people living in NSW. We are immensely proud of the work that we, together with countless community organisations, have done to put an end to unfair evictions in NSW.

    However, systemic advocacy work doesn’t end when bad laws end on paper.

    No-grounds evictions are a thing of the past, so now our focus shifts to monitoring how the new provisions allowing for lease termination are being applied. We will continue to keep an eye out for any misuses of the new terminations provisions and actively campaign if we notice any troubling trends that need to be addressed. We know that weak oversight of rental costs, property standards and industry practices have denied renters the benefits of a safe, stable and healthy home, and we will continue to campaign for this reality to change.

    Going forward, we will continue our focus on issues we know are important to renters, including:

  • Addressing rental affordability and caps on rent increases;
  • Improving minimum standards around things like accessibility and energy efficiency for rental homes; and
  • Allowing renters to make simple changes to their rental and basic decisions about their housing to make it really 'feel like a home' – like choosing to adopt a pet.
    • What about you?

     

    Have you been an forced to move by an excessive rent increase? Have you had to go without essentials just to afford rent? Do you hold back from asking for repairs? Your story can help improve renting.

     

    ➤ share your story