Rental agreements need to recognise housing is a human rights issue, and that principle should be enshrined in the ACT's Residential Tenancies Act, an e-petition to the ACT government says.
Principal petitioner Dr Adam Hughes Henry said the strain of having to move his family last year, including young children and elderly mother, had moved him to action.
"I thought that realistically, this was really a human rights-related issue, and so I approached ... the Human Rights Commission in the ACT and also looked at it federally, and it was impossible to do anything," he said.
"So I decided that I'd sort of take matters into my own hands really and see if there was any support for the idea."
His petition sets out that tenants are often vulnerable due to the many social pressures exacerbated by the pandemic, facing "increased rents, uncertain employment opportunities, financial exploitation and the threat of homelessness".
OPINION: Renters' rights are human rights
Mr Hughes is petitioning for a wellbeing clause to be added to the act.
Such a clause should require lessors or agencies to provide compensation if their actions place tenants at reasonable risk of homelessness, disrupt their employment opportunities, impose unreasonable and/or avoidable moving costs, impact on any carer responsibilities or unreasonably disrupt the education of dependent children.
"It seems to me that at the moment it's set up primarily as a sort of zero-sum game where ... the majority of tenants [who] are good just face so many obstacles and have no rights in relation to just basic wellbeing," Dr Henry said.
"There's so many people struggling to afford afford rent and there's so many people struggling just to find a place to live."
Sponsoring MLA Andrew Braddock said he had chosen to get behind the call for a wellbeing clause because of "the need to recognise that we're talking about somebody's home, when you're talking about rental agreements".
He said he wanted to see the territory government start to consider the impacts of lessors' decisions on the personal lives of tenants.
Mr Braddock had heard a number of accounts from community members who say "they're not being treated with a human rights in mind".
"They are losing a home or they're facing unreasonable price increases or other sorts of penalties, which are highly distressing for them. We just need to look at that balance and see if we've got it right," he said.
The territory government introduced protections for renters affected by the COVID-19 pandemic last year, including a 12-week moratorium on evictions.
Mr Braddock said the protections, which have now ended, were helpful for renters but didn't introduce the issue of human rights to rental agreements.
Mr Hughes' e-petition, a change.org version of which has more than 11,000 signatures, will close at the beginning of April, after which point it will be referred to the relevant minister.
