Landlord hits back at online trolls

Melbourne retiree Ann-Maree Eastman owns four properties with her husband Phillip and spoke about housing policy on ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night.

“I’m just so angry that, as a landlord, I shouldn’t have to feel guilty about owning property – or properties in our case,” she told the panel.

“Why does it appear that all landlords are demonised and put in the same bracket?”

A clip of Ms Eastman on the show now has more than 350,000 views online with dozens calling out her comments online.

Speaking to news.com.au on Wednesday, Ms Eastman said she was shocked that so many people had pounced on her question online.

“I’m not quite sure why. There were six questions, so I’m not sure why mine is the one everyone has jumped on.

“I’m trending!” she said.

Ms Eastman said she wasn’t a bad person and knew people were “worse off” than herself and her husband. She said that she had simply wanted to point out that some landlords do “absorb the costs” of rising interest rates.

“I am aware there are people that can’t afford to rent and whatever, but I can’t be responsible for everybody’s life situation,” she said.

“I know there is a lot of homelessness. I know that people are struggling but I’m not the big bad person. It’s not like we have 20-30 properties we just have a few.”

The property owner said she simply got “really annoyed” when politicians “made it out” that all landlords were “making all this money”.

“A lot of renters say landlords don’t care. You are dumping us all into the bucket and we are not all in the same bucket,” she said.

“Just think about if you are a renter, who you are renting from. If they sell their property, who are you going to rent from?”

During Q&A, Greens MP and housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather was the first to respond to Ms Eastman’s question, saying the current rental system was unfair.

“We have had a tax system that has encouraged people to buy up property investments and then able to write off any losses they make on those investments off of their tax,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I just don’t think that’s fair.”

Q&A host Patricia Karvelas came in to defend Ms Eastman, pointing out that landlords had indeed been hurt by rising interest rates and soaring mortgage repayments.

However, Mr Chandler-Mathers said comparing the struggles of landlords and renters were incomparable.

“If renters lose, they are sleeping in their car on the street. If a property investor has to sell their home, that might be bad but they get a huge sale price out of that home,” he said.

NSW minister for housing and homelessness Rose Jackson said the issue was more complex than simply removing tax handouts.

“We’ve got ourselves into such a dysfunctional quagmire and mess that everyone does have to come to the table and certainly that includes state governments … we’ve got work to do, but so does the Commonwealth and so does local government,” she said.

“We’ve got to acknowledge that if there was a lever to pull or a button to press, and it was that easy, we would have done it. There’s a lot of work to do to get our housing market back to somewhere resembling a fair distribution of housing.”

Sydney Inner West Greens councillor Dylan Griffiths took issue with Ms Eastman suggesting that she is a “self-funded retiree” and relies on her investments to stay afloat.

“Sorry but retirees depending on income from renters – you are not ‘self funded’, you are funded by renters,” he said in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.