When 31-year-old Rachel McFadden moved into a Northcote sharehouse four months ago, she made a concerted effort to be a good, easygoing housemate.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
"I think I put a lot of work and invested a lot of time in trying to build a relationship without being co-dependant," Ms McFadden said.
It came as a shock when she was told by one of her housemates ??? the leaseholder of the house ??? that he wanted her to move out. She was given one month to do so.
"I couldn't work out why, I thought I must have offended him in some way," Ms McFadden said. "He said 'no, on the contrary, I just feel like I'm in a state of flux at the moment and I feel that you are too and the two energies don't match'."
Victoria's rental laws provide for two types of share houses, a co-tenancy, where all housemates are on the lease, and a sub-tenancy, where one tenant is on the lease and rents out rooms to other tenants.
In a sub-tenancy, the leaseholder ??? or head tenant ??? has the same obligations to the sub tenant as a landlord would have to a renter, meaning that they must allow 120 days for a tenant to move if they ask them to leave for no specified reason.
- Related: New rent laws could hit a stumbling block
- Related: What renting will look like in 2027
- Related: Is it worth renting out your spare room?
Tenants Victoria chief executive Mark O'Brien said the difficulty for sub-tenants was establishing whether they were a legitimate tenant under the law, or if the are considered a licensee.
"There can be these head tenancy situations where you can't even legitimately establish that there's a tenancy agreement - it's more of a license arrangement. Unfortunately licensees have few rights, whereas tenants have quite a lot of rights," Mr O'Brien said.
Mr O'Brien said people who in a dispute with their head tenant needed to apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to get a ruling on whether they were a tenant or a licensee before they could do anything about it.
"This is the problem with living in sharehouse, often they're done on a very informal basis, even though the law around them is quite complicated," he said. "The critical thing is not whether anything has been written down, it's whether they've been given exclusive possession over part of the premises and they pay rent."
The state government last week proposed changes to rental laws designed to give tenants more rights and make renting fairer, but there were no proposed changes that would affect sub-tenants in share houses.
Mr O'Brien said there was a lot of grey area in the law, and that VCAT should have more power to deal with share house disagreements.
"There will need to be an easier way to resolve disputes," he said.
"There's an increasing number of people that will be tenants throughout their whole life, and will probably have to resort to shared housing in one form or another. We sort of think about this as 'this is just for people at uni', but it's not the way it's going to be. It will become an essential feature of the rental market and the only way that demand can be managed."
Share house website Flatmate Finders business manager Guy Mitchell said the site had a 2 per cent rise in users in their early 30s since 2011.
"People are choosing to live in share accommodation because they can get a better place cheaper than if they were on their own," Mr Mitchell said.
Ms McFadden said she had looked for a new share house, but was concerned about having another negative experience, despite great experiences in sharehouses in her 20s.
"I've never before been asked to leave a share house and I've built really long-lasting friendships with my housemates."
Ms McFadden said she was considering the more expensive option of renting on her own.
"I have thought about living by myself, so that I can come home to a place where I feel safe and comfortable and I can just be me."