Renters & Housing Union

27/01/2026
By: Orlando Smith

With everything stacked against you, back against the wall, and your family depending on your guidance, it may seem hopeless. But the Renters and Housing Union does not stand by you when it is easy. They stand with you when its hardest. Perth mother Nicola Torres, learned this when the RAHU formed a picket line on her front lawn, damned if they would let a bailiff evict her and her two daughters.

This is no situation any single parent should be put in. While she trusted her government to support her in a difficult time, it was her community that did. Unfortunately, for the 23,000 people on the wait list for community housing, they are learning the hard way that even in housing for the most at risk people, profit comes first. Everything else is secondary.

Community housing, like what Miss Torres is fighting to stay in, is held and owned through ‘not for profit’ companies. While the Government markets these as having very little difference to social housing, their financial records, and eviction rates, tell a different story and help explain why Miss Torres and many like her are evicted at over five times the rate of social housing.

Miss Torres is living in a Foundation Housings property, a non-for-profit-group. After being unable to work she fell behind on her rent, but when she went to pay it back, Foundation Housing refused to take her money. She was left confused and without answers as to why this was.

RAHU decided to find answers and fight the eviction with her.

Following her contacting us, we got right to work and what we found devastates the narrative the government and private sector has written about supporting the most desperate. Foundation Housings annual report for 2024 shows an alarming trend of profit over people even if they claim to treat housing as a right. Their report states, “Rental Revenue has grown year on year for the past 5 years.” In 2024, after development costs, they reported 8.5 million dollars profit. Your money, funding executive salaries. The story it tells is that those most desperate during a housing crisis are numbers in a spreadsheet; Figures to help line the pockets of the board members.

The RAHU refuses to stand by while the danger of a mother and her two young daughters being homeless looms. The strength of RAHU’s action did not go unnoticed either. When the bailiff arrived, the sight of the RAHU stopped them in their tracks. They knew they would not step past that picket line, and RAHU knew we would not let him.

The act was not an empty message; it was a statement. This behaviour, even with government support, will not be allowed within our communities.

Within two weeks- two weeks of uncertainty and fear no doubt- the WA Supreme Court halted the eviction. Vested interest be damned, the work of volunteers, union members, and lawyers put a stop to this unjust eviction. The news broke and that night, her children were able to stay with the mother again, in their home.

Coming on a month after the first picket line was formed, this was a promise kept. RAHU will not stand for a single mother’s eviction. We will not wait for the government. We will take it into our own hands.

No family should be on the street. Until housing is a right in our country, RAHU will not stop its fight. Community by community, we will support those that can no longer do it alone. We make this promise to every community. Including yours. It is our duty to keep our communities together when no one else will.

Join us today. Be the next member to hold the line when the bailiff knocks in your neighbourhood.