Complaints management

An example of this work has been to support Evolve Housing’s partnership with Women’s Community Shelters whereby third-party organisations with available housing provide their properties to women and children escaping domestic and family violence. Evolve Housing manages these tenancies with Women’s Community Shelters providing wraparound support for the residents.

Although the women pay rent, through the contractual arrangements the landlords agree to not receive rent, enabling the rental income to go towards providing support services to help the tenants get back on their feet.

The Governance and Legal team also assisted in the successful negotiation—and subsequent formalisation— of a $100 million loan with the National Housing Finance and Investment Corporation (NHFIC).

See Chapter 2, Achieve Sustainable Growth for information about new development projects and property acquisitions this financial year.

We strongly believe addressing feedback and complaints from our tenants, clients and other external stakeholders is an important way to improve our services. We have a thorough complaints management policy and record and track all complaints in our Complaints Register. A complaint is an expression of dissatisfaction with the standard or type of service provided by us. Complaints do not include employee conduct complaints, neighbour disputes or appeals enquiries (e.g. rent calculations or tenancy transfers) as these are managed separately.

We received 98 complaints during the 2021–22 financial year—an increase of 30% from the prior period.

The increase in the number of repairs and maintenance and customer service complaints can largely be attributed to delays caused by COVID-19.

The increased number of complaints also reflects increased understanding by tenants of our complaints management process. We have strived to increase understanding by including details on our website, in our resident newsletters, in common areas of our properties, and by increasing staff awareness of our complaints process so they can better support tenants to raise

concerns.

We recognise that there are always improvements that can be made and thank all our tenants and stakeholders for helping us to continually raise the bar.