For tenants

If you want to know more about what you need to do when you rent a home, talk to a client service officer or call the Aboriginal Enquiry Line. NSW Fair Trading will also help you with problems if you are renting. You can ring them on freecall 1800 500 330. You can also contact your local Aboriginal Tenancy Advocacy Service.

If you are having any troubles with tenancy issues and need some more help you can sign a disclosure form. This means that we can talk to your support person or worker with your permission.

The Aboriginal Tenants’ Advice and Advocacy Program (TAAP) is also available. 

You have the right to enjoy your home and live without noisy and rude neighbours. We want you to feel safe in your home. If you are having trouble, try to sort out the problem with your neighbour. If this does not work, talk to your client service officer about what is going on.

If you need to leave your home for more than six weeks, you must tell DCJ Housing how long you will be away by contacting your client service officer or writing to us. You will need to tell DCJ Housing even if there are other family members in your home while you are gone.

If you have a pet, you must make sure the pet is not causing a problem to others. If we decide that your pet is causing problems for neighbours, you must remove the pet from your home within 48 hours of DCJ Housing sending you a message in writing.

If you have any rubbish at your home, you will need to remove it properly. Please do not burn rubbish in the garden or yard. Please phone the Housing Contact Centre as soon as possible on 1800 422 322 if any repairs need to be done in your home. If you have anyone over to visit in your home and they damage it, you will have to pay for the repairs.

DCJ provide information about transferring to a more suitable home, swapping homes and moving out of social housing on their website, 

If you are leaving your home and aren’t planning to come back, you should tell your client service officer three weeks before you go. If you leave without telling us, you will still have to pay the rent and may have to pay for any damages that happen.

Friends and family can come and stay with you for up to four weeks. If they stay longer than four weeks and you want them to stay in your home, you must fill in an Application for Additional Occupant. If you do not tell us when someone else is staying with you for longer than four weeks, the help we give with the rent could be stopped. If someone moves into your home full-time and you do not tell us, this is fraud.

In general, tenants do not need DCJ Housing approval to have a visitor stay with them for up to four weeks (28 days). However, in certain cases, DCJ Housing can apply a visitor sanction (three-day rule) to a tenancy. This means that if DCJ Housing has proof that you haven’t kept to your tenancy agreement, DCJ Housing can stop you having visitors staying for more than three days without telling DCJ Housing.

If you live in an AHO home, then the AHO must also agree to this visitor sanction. This approval from the AHO will be managed by your DCJ Housing client service officer.