From harassment to a happy home

Peter* was living in a caravan park in North Central Victoria. Neal*, the caravan park manager, had initiated a dispute when he discovered Peter, who was estranged from his family, didn’t have a will. Neal was worried about the difficult position the park would be in if a caravan owner died intestate – but rather than negotiating or trying to talk this through, tried to strong-arm Peter out of the park. Needless to say, a person’s will is not their landlord’s business! But Neal began a whole series of incompetent attempts to weaponise the law against Peter, such as changing the park rules, sending breach notices and notices to vacate. 
 
While this created a huge amount of stress for Peter, all these attempts failed thanks to assistance from our retirement team. Neal was humiliated at VCAT when he tried to evict Peter; he had sent the wrong notice to vacate to the Tribunal, just a blank copy off the Consumer Affairs website rather than a completed form with the required details. His application was dismissed. This slipshod approach to legal processes was consistent across all the notices he tried to serve on Peter. 
 
But Neal continued to harass Peter in new and cruel ways, including by making false reports to the police and welfare services, and inciting his neighbours to insult and abuse him. He continually made false allegations against Peter to HAAG’s Retirement Housing Advice Service, as if he thought he could convince HAAG that our client didn’t deserve our support. 
 
Even though Peter was entitled to stay in the park, it was clear that the owner’s cruelty and bullying wasn’t going to go away. HAAG’s regional team started working with Peter in February 2025, applying for long-term social housing. Thanks to the team's incredible work, Peter received an offer of a beautiful community housing property just a few months later, and finally moved from the caravan park in April. His new home is better designed, bigger, nicer, and managed by competent professionals. He was relieved to leave the badly mismanaged park and its buffoonish owner behind him.
 
This kind of coordination – one team sustaining someone’s current housing, another team finding new and better housing – is exactly how HAAG is supposed to work, and a key part of our vision for changing lives.

*Name changed to protect client confidentiality