Student innovation provides a helping hand for renters

When a team of UTS students set out to create an online self-help tool for renters in 2018, they couldn’t have known that the impact of COVID-19 over the years that followed would see renters face a significant increase in financial stress and risk of homelessness. Inflation and other global economic factors continue to add to this stress.

Now the Dear Landlord tool – initially developed with the support of Allens mentors collaborating with subject matter experts from pro bono client Justice Connect – is helping renters in Victoria to avoid eviction into homelessness.

In 2021 it won the Best in Class Award for Social Impact from Good Design Australia. In the same year more than 28,000 users accessed the tool in the six months following the introduction of rental reforms in Victoria. 

“Justice Connect is grateful for Allens’ longstanding, high-impact pro bono support of our work in preventing and ending homelessness for Victorians. We created Dear Landlord, which has been co-designed with people who have lived experience of housing insecurity, so that renters could better understand their rights and take earlier, practical steps to avoid eviction. Building on over 20 years of our Homeless Law program’s expertise as Victoria’s specialist free legal service for people facing homelessness, Dear Landlord scales our reach so that more renters are proactively helped to stay safely housed,” said Cameron Lavery, Justice Connect’s Head of Community Programs.

Justice Connect is a not-for-profit organisation delivering high impact interventions that increase access to legal support and progress social justice. The first version of Dear Landlord was developed for Justice Connect's Homeless Law program through the 2018 Allens Neota UTS Law Tech Challenge for Social Justice program, which guides students to develop web applications that promote access to justice and make tailored legal information more accessible.

Throughout the annual five-month challenge, Allens mentors work with student teams to coach them through aspects of designing a solution that solves a real world pain point for a participating NGO, using design thinking methods and Neota Logic, an automation app. The team behind Dear Landlord, a group of students – some now Allens lawyers – called JusticeByDesign, won the competition in 2018 and Dear Landlord continues to evolve and be used by renters today.

Current Allens lawyer Art Honeysett (pictured above) was one of the students on the JusticeByDesign team, and reflected on the lasting contribution his team has made through the challenge.

'It is something that we are all very excited about to this day. The current Dear Landlord app has evolved since we first created it in 2018, but the general structure of the app, the questions and the output are broadly similar. We continue to be impressed by the amazing progress of Dear Landlord – in particular the recognition of its outstanding design and innovation through the recent Good Design Award,' Art said.

This year, the 2022 winner of the Allens Neota UTS Law Tech Challenge for Social Justice was Team Check Protect. They worked with Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience (AIME) to develop an app that helps its mentors navigate the complexities of the 'Working with Children Check' requirements, leaving AIME to focus on its core work. The 2023 challenge will commence in February, with 20 students across four teams competing.