TNAG-0669-FCO40-818-Policy-on-housing-and-resettlement-in-Hong-Kong-1977 — Page 25

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A J BRADBROOK

HKLJ (1977)

Commission of Victoria as an example, while there are no fewer than 27 covenants on the part of the tenant, all of which justify eviction without notice, there is not a single obligation on the commission. In Victoria, immediate eviction can be imposed on any tenant for the remarkably trivial 'offence' of failing to replace all lost keys22 or for failing to give the commission immediate notice of any stoppage in the water service.23 In addition, the agreement requires the tenant 'to give the Commis- sion on demand any information required by the Commission concerning the tenant or his family,' again on pain of immediate eviction. Finally, it should be noted that the tenancy agreements of all six State housing commissions in Australia provide that the tenancy shall be from week to week;25 thus, the commissions may determine a tenancy on only one week's notice without the need for a reason to be given.

It should also be noted that the present Authority, when drafting the current form of tenancy agreement in 1974, made significant improvements towards achieving a well-balanced document over the original form of tenancy agreement adopted in 1957 by the previous Housing Authority. For example, the onerous clause 2(z) of the 1957 form of agreement was omitted in the present agreement. In this clause, the tenant agreed: 'to deprive himself of all rights of protection against ejectment afforded by any existing legislation (if any) or any future legislation applicable to the said flat.'

Nevertheless, despite the favourable comparisons with public housing tenancy agreements of other countries and the improvements made to the original 1957 form of agreement, the preceding discussion has shown that the currency tenancy agreement falls far short of being a well-balanced document. It is submitted that a major revision of the present tenancy agreement is necessary to eradicate its existing deficiencies. With this in mind, a draft domestic tenancy agreement is appended to this article as a possible replacement for the present agreement. Only the onerous clauses in the present agreement have been altered in substance, although the wording of some of the other clauses has been amended with a view both to making them more comprehensible to the layman and to improving the drafting.

see Bradbrook, Poverty and the Residential Landlord-Tenant Relationship (Canberra: Australian Government Publishing Service, 1975) chapt 16. 22 Housing Commission of Victoria Tenancy Agreement, clause 4(b). 23 ibid. clause 4(f).

24 ibid, clause 3(b). 25 ibid. clause 1.