Falling behind or unable to pay your rent?

If you are having difficulty paying your rent and bills, please contact your Client Service Officer. We will work with you to see if we can find a solution.

Your Client Service Officer can help you by:

• discussing your rent account with you
• setting up a payment plan to pay off your arrears
• referring you to a financial counselling service.

Arrears

The term ’arrears’ means that you are behind in your rent or owe money for other charges. Talk to your Client Service Officer if you are in arrears to organise a payment plan. If you fall into arrears by more than two weeks and have not been in contact with us to ask for help, proceedings with the NSW Civil and Administration Tribunal (NCAT) may be considered.

At NCAT two things can happen:

• You may be ordered to pay the rent and other charges you owe
• NCAT can authorise Wentworth to ask you to leave the property and pay any rent and other charges you owe.

Rental assistance

In social housing, to help you pay for your rent you can apply for:

• a rental subsidy through Wentworth
• Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA) through Centrelink.

Rental subsidy

If you are a social housing tenant, we encourage you to apply for a rental subsidy every six (6) months.

The rental subsidy you will receive is based on:

• a percentage of household income
• plus 100% of your maximum entitlement for Commonwealth Rent Assistance (CRA).

This application is called ‘rent review’. It is important that you complete it on time, so your rental subsidy is not affected. If you return the forms late, you may be charged the full market rent.

Wentworth will conduct rent reviews every six months. The purpose of the review is to make sure you are paying the correct amount of rent and update any changes to your household income.

If your circumstances change, for example someone moves in or out of your home, you start a new job, or leave your job, you must contact us and return an ‘Application for a Rental Subsidy’ form, along with documentation supporting the changes, so that we can reassess your rental subsidy based on your new household income and you don’t fall behind in rent.