’Know Your Landlord’

New initiative to empower renters amid the housing crisis Urbanism researchers at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning have launched a creative project, "Know Your Landlord", an operational website that aims to empower renters by showing a potential future where they could have more control in the rental process. Imagine if the power imbalance between renters and landlords shifted. Imagine if tenants had as much information about their landlords as landlords knew about them. With more than 80,000 tenancy issues each year reported to the Tenants Union of NSW there is a clear demand for renters to have access to safe, affordable and secure homes. To address this, today a team from Urbanism in the Sydney School of Architecture, Design and Planning announced the launch of the "Know Your Landlord" project which takes a disruptive approach to tenants' advocacy by creating a website that projects a rental market where renters have the same amount of background information on their landlord as their landlord asks of them. The researchers - Head of Urbanism Associate Professor Dallas Rogers , Dr Sophia Maalsen and Research Fellow, Dr Peta Wolifson - have developed a website that illustrates how a more equitable housing system could be within reach by shedding light on existing problems facing renters. Australia's rental landscape is disproportionately skewed in favour of landlords.