PRESS RELEASE: Land-Lease Park Home Owners Call to be Included in Discussions of Stronger Regulation by Federal and State Ministers

Residents in Manufactured Home Land-Lease Residential Parks are calling upon the Federal Assistant Treasurer & Minister for Finance, Stephen Jones, to include consideration of stronger regulation of the Land-Lease Park sector as well as retirement villages when he meets with state ministers responsible for consumer affairs in December.
Following a series of stories on the ABC’s 7.30Report and in their online newsfeed, it has been widely reported that the Assistant Treasurer intends to place discussion of stronger regulation of the Retirement Village industry on the agenda of a meeting he will have with state and territory consumer affairs ministers in December.
The primary peak body representing owners of homes in land-lease residential parks in Queensland, QMHOA (Queensland Manufactured Home Owners Association Inc.), has written to him and both the Queensland Housing Minister and Attorney General and their LNP Opposition counterparts, urging them to include consideration of the land-Lease Residential Park sector in their discussions at and before their meeting.
In their letters to the ministers, QMHOA argue that in both the retirement village and land-lease residential park sectors residents are experiencing financial and emotional distress caused by the business relationship they have entered into with the owners of their park or village. QMHOA believes that in both sectors, the underlying cause of the sort of distress so evident in the recent media reports is the significant imbalance of power between the business companies and corporation that own the parks and villages and the individual older home owners.
QMHOA President, Roger Marshall, explained, “Just about every time we visit a park or respond to calls or emails from our members, we hear stories of residents feeling distressed and angry not only by actions their park owner is taking that they don’t approve of and think will disadvantage them, but also about feeling powerless to do anything effective about it. They also regularly speak of feeling that their views are not recognized or respected by their park owner. Often, they say that they feel they are not being treated with any respect; and sometimes that they are being bullied by them.”
Like their counterparts in retirement villages, residents in land-lease residential parks are looking to government to do more to protect them from businesses abusing any power advantage they have by adopting unfair practices. While QMHOA acknowledges that the Queensland government has taken some steps both in the past and earlier this year to assist them by amending existing legislation, they firmly believe that much more is needed. President Roger Marshall said, “We appreciate the changes to legislation that have been made, they will make some difference. However, we are disappointed that the reforms undertaken are nowhere near as comprehensive as we would have liked to see, and we have serious reservations about how effective some of them are likely to be.”
A weakness QMHOA sees, which places significant limitations on the effectiveness of such efforts, is that they are taken at the state level and for the most part different in every state. This means that they suffer from being disjointed and inconsistent across different parts of the country in the face of corporations that operate across the whole nation. They also, do not engage the extra powers that federal government can deploy to regulate big business practices if it chooses to do so. “What we would really like to see is more powerful action that would come from the federal and state governments working together”, says QMHOA President Roger Marshall
In their letter to the Assistant Treasurer and the Queensland Housing Minister and Attorney General, QMHOA urges them to give serious consideration to ideas that have been canvassed in the dialogue surrounding those problems such as:
I. Classification of investment by older people the retirement village, land lease residential parks and perhaps other sectors as investing in a financial product. Thus, enabling greater oversight and regulation by ASIC;
II. Harmonization of state laws introduced to help regulation the various sectors. We note the acclaim that the moves taken in 2010/11 to do this in relation to wider Australian Consumer Laws has received.
III. Introduction of coordinated sector specific Ombudsman services at both state and federal levels to assist older vulnerable Australians unable to negotiate the civil and administrative tribunals processes they are obliged to turn to in the different states.
IV. Establishment of a parliamentary committee inquiry or similar process aimed at carrying out a root and branch review of both the current retirement village, land-lease residential parks sectors with a view to assuring optimal housing options for older Australians to transition into in their later years.