Pay your public housing rent and debts

Paying your rent

You can pay your rent weekly or fortnightly. You must pay your rent 2 weeks in advance.

You can pay your rent by:

• automatic payments from Centrelink or your bank account
• online, phone or in-person.

From your Centrelink payment

The easiest way to pay your rent is to get Centrelink to take it from your payment before they pay you.

To get Centrelink to pay your rent from your payment:

1. Download and fill in the Centrelink deduction authority form [PDF 335kB].
2. Give the form to Housing ACT when you sign your lease or to your housing manager

When you sign your lease you will choose a day for the direct payments to start. Centrelink will send you a letter with the date the payments will start.

To stop Centrelink rent payments

Tell your housing manager if you want Centrelink to stop the rent payments.

You can use the Centrelink deduction authority form [PDF 335kB] to:

• stop your rent being taken out of your Centrelink payment.
• pay other debts from your Centrelink payment, like rent you owe or maintenance costs.

If you stop payments, you must set up another way to pay your rent.

Direct debit from your bank account

You can set up a direct debit from your bank account, building society or credit union.

1. Download and fill in the Direct debit request form [Word 200kB].
2. Return the form to Housing ACT.

Your rent payment will be taken from your account on a Thursday every week or fortnight.

If you do not have enough money in your account or you stop the direct debit:

• your rent will not be paid
• your bank may charge you a dishonour fee
• you will need to pay the missed payment.

Pay online or in-person

You can:

• pay your rent online at Access Canberra
• pay in person using your Housing ACT payment card or reference number at Access Canberra or Australia Post
• pay by internet banking and BPAY.

If you cannot pay your rent

You should contact your housing manager if:

• you're worried you won't be able to pay your rent
• you fall behind in your rent payments.

Your housing manager can help you plan how to repay your rent debt.

If you do not pay your rent debt

A rent debt is serious because you are breaking the rules of your lease.

If you do not contact Housing ACT to arrange a way to pay your debt, we may apply to the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal to:

• make you pay the debt (called a Breach of Payment Order)
• evict you.

Paying other debts to Housing ACT

You can pay us the same way you make your rent payments.

You may need to pay back money:

• if your household income went up and you should have been paying more rent
• for repairs or damage to Housing ACT property.

Learn more about how we manage debts

Contact us