Charles Joseph “Joey” Warren,80,has lived in a miner’s cottage at Catherine Hill Bay,about 30 kilometres south of Newcastle,for 57 years. His grandparents lived there before him.
And for as long as he can remember,his rent has been $50 a month.
Things changed in 2017. A property developer,Wallalong Land Developments,bought the land from Coal&Allied,then owned by Rio Tinto.
The developer discontinued eviction proceedings against Warren after it emerged he was a “protected tenant” under a little-known rent control law based on wartime regulations.
Instead,it sought to increase his rent. A trio of barristers – former judge Greg James,KC;James’ son Liam;and property law expert Patricia Lane – and the Tenants’ Union of NSW successfully argued his rent should be fixed at $50 a month.
Developer Darren Nicholson,director of Wallalong Land Developments,told The Sydney Morning Herald the company wasn’t “trying to kick him out” in the NSW Local Court case,but was “seeking a fair rent”.
He said he was “happy for the public to judge” whether $50 a month was fair.
Not a house but a home
To decide the case,the court had to sit as a Fair Rents Board,which has not been a separate body since 1987.
“To again draw fromThe Castle,for Mr Warren,‘It’s not a house. It’s a home,’ ” magistrate Stephen Olischlager said last week.
Olischlager said he was “required to apply a law which,prior to these proceedings,may have been considered nothing more than a curious legal vestige from the previous century”.
Warren had no written lease. His grandparents moved into the cottage in the 1890s when his grandfather started working at Catherine Hill Bay mine. They paid rent to the coal company.
Warren also worked at the mine,as did his father. He moved into the cottage after his grandparents died and rent was deducted from his pay. He paid for all repairs and maintenance. The mine shut in 2002.
Warren believed he was born in the cottage,and provided a photo of himself as a baby with his grandmother outside the home in 1944. The magistrate said Warren also had 900 acres at Tenterfield,but “there is no house on that property,only a corrugated iron shed”.
Joey Warren with his grandmother in 1944.Supplied
Even after the property changed hands,Warren continued to pay the same rent.
The developer engaged an expert who calculated market rent as at April 2023 at $548 a week. But the magistrate rejected that analysis.
‘Protected tenant’
Warren is one of a dwindling number of NSW residents who is a “protected tenant” under since-repealed legislation,,which retained wartime rent control measures.
Joey Warren’s Catherine Hill Bay home.Supplied
Under those laws,there were restricted grounds for eviction. “Fair rent”,rather than market rent,was calculated with reference to the capital value of the property on August 31,1939 – the day before World War II started.
The magistrate in Warren’s case estimated the property would have had a basic rent of 5 shillings a week in August 1939. Ultimately,he fixed fair rent at the current sum of $50 a month.
January 1986 cut-off
From the mid-1950s,premises have been gradually “decontrolled” in NSW,so that the 1948 protections no longer applied. No new protected tenancies were created after a cut-off date of January 1,1986.
While the 1948 law is no longer in force,the repealing it kept the old provisions alive to protect the small number of protected tenants in NSW who have been living in their homes since before the January 1986 cut-off.
In 2006,the NSW Court of Appeal found a man at Lithgow was a protected tenant of a on former mining land.
University of NSW Emeritus Professor Brendan Edgeworth said that,in 1947,“demographically there was a lot of support for rent control”,partly because 47 per cent of Australians were tenants.
In the 2019-20 financial year,31 per cent of households rented their homes,.
The law formerly applied to “pretty much all private residential tenancies”,he said,and some commercial tenancies.
The wartime regulations expired in 1948 and “it generated a lot of political discussion”,Edgeworth said. There was a federal referendum that year to amend the Constitution to give federal parliament the power to regulate rents. That referendum failed,but the NSW government enacted its own law.
The Minns government to ending so-called no grounds evictions on fixed and periodic leases.
Warren’s case “evokes many of the current issues and debates surrounding the protection of tenants and security of tenure and the control of rents”,Edgeworth said.
‘Important protection’
Tenants’ Union of NSW chief executive Leo Patterson Ross said:“We see this as a really important protection for this group of people who have been in their homes for a very long time.
“Joey is an exemplar of that,where you’ve got three generations of family and more than a century’s history. A lot of the protected tenants are similar.
“They’re almost exclusively now elderly people who really would struggle to find a home in the private rental market.”
Tenants Union of NSW strategic litigation solicitor Cass Wong and Joey Warren outside his Catherine Hill Bay home.Supplied
The union’s strategic litigation solicitor,Cass Wong,who acted for Warren,said that “Mr Warren,now 80 and of declining health,gets to keep his home,which has been in his family for over 100 years”.
The serenity
Sue Whyte,Warren’s friend and co-president of the Catherine Hill Bay Progress Association,said:“The houses of Catherine Hill Bay tell the history of the mining town. These houses are priceless.
“Catherine Hill Bay is one of only two state-listed heritage townships in NSW.”
In a final allusion to The Castle,the magistrate said the protections “allow Mr Warren the opportunity to continue to enjoy the ‘serenity’ of his home for his remaining years”.
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