Getting involved

The Office of Housing is committed to increasing opportunities for public tenants to contribute to decisions affecting their living environment.

Tenant Participation is a key component of the this commitment to improved customer service providing a framework for tenants to give regular feedback at a local regional level.

This means that we will:

• Ask you about decisions that affect your housing and your community
• Encourage tenants from a wide variety of backgrounds and abilities to be part of making these decisions

If you’re a public housing tenant, you can:

• Tell us how we can deliver services to meet your needs better. This could include maintenance priorities, health and wellbeing, and safety and security issues.
• Inform the planning and management of the services available from the Social Housing Advocacy and Support (SHASP) program
• Help to manage the local community facility or community garden and plan how it will be used in the future
• Organise community events for Housing Week
• Get involved in developing local activities to meet needs in your community. These could include, for example, recreation activities for older adults or children.

You can do this by:

• Attending local meetings and regional tenant forums
• Joining a local tenants group or Neighbourhood Renewal group
• Becoming a member of the Victorian Public Tenants Association (VPTA)

We will help you get involved by:

• Training you in the skills you need to be involved
• Supporting you to attend regional tenant forums, for example help with travel cost
• Funding tenant groups to represent local communities
• Facilitating consultation between tenants, the Office of Housing, the VPTA and SHASP providers.

We also help tenants participate by:

• Funding the VPTA to represent tenants groups all over Victoria
• Providing opportunities for representatives from tenants groups, regional tenant forums and the VPTA to meet our senior staff
• Funding SHASP providers to support tenants to develop representative tenant groups and assist individual tenant involvement.

For more information contact your local housing office.