A Supreme Court challenge to the WA government's use of no grounds evictions at the end of fixed term public housing tenancies was adjourned to October 7 after hearings on Tuesday in which lawyers for two public housing tenants argued the policy is unlawful because it denies procedural fairness and is legally unreasonable.

Adjourning the matter to complete submissions and reply after hearing from the tenants' lawyers and from lawyers for the WA Department of Communities, Justice Matthew Howard noted the case is "important to a lot of people, it's an important case, and it's going to take some consideration".

The hearing came as the impacts of the Department's public housing policies were put under the spotlight by the case of a man who took his own life shortly after being evicted from his public housing property in Perth, weeks after the Department of Communities informed him he had been refused further public housing assistance.

In a joint hearing Tuesday, the WA Supreme Court heard a case reserved to it by a Perth Magistrate on questions of law involving the attempted 'no grounds' eviction of a WA public housing tenant and simultaneously hear a second judicial review case for a WA family facing eviction at the end of a fixed term public housing tenancy.

Barry Garlett, a Noongar man living in public housing in Perth, was represented in the Supreme Court by community legal centres Circle Green, SCALES and barristers Matthew Albert and Fiona Lester, who argue the Housing Authority owes a duty to afford procedural fairness to a tenant before making the decision to terminate a fixed term tenancy and, as a result, the termination was invalid.

At a hearing for Mr Garlett in the Perth Magistrates Court on March 8 this year, Magistrate Darge made orders to reserve to the WA Supreme Court the questions of: whether the Magistrates Court has jurisdiction under the WA Residential Tenancies Act to assess the validity of termination applications; and whether a denial of procedural fairness or legal unreasonableness render this eviction invalid.

A second case also heard Tuesday is a Supreme Court judicial review of a 'no grounds' eviction involving a mother with young children, which also challenges the decision to continue to use a fixed term tenancy in public housing. The same lawyers argue the Department's decision to issue a termination notice is legally unreasonable where it impacts on children detrimentally, in this case destroying the children's chances of being reunified with their parent - and that this also invalidates the eviction.

The identity of the family in the second judicial review case has been suppressed by order of the Court in order to protect the identity of the children, with the tenant to be referred to by the pseudonym GT.

On Tuesday, GT said: "I just want a home to be with my kids. I can't be reunified with my children if I don't have a safe home for them. Receiving a termination notice without a fair hearing made me feel like no matter what I did, I was going to fail, that there was no chance of a positive outcome."

SCALES Community Legal Centre solicitor Kate Davis said WA is the only state routinely using without ground evictions against public housing tenants.

"The Department takes a punitive approach to problems and provides only limited support to tenants. In the six years to June 2022, at least 3070 children were evicted from public housing," she said.

"Public housing evictions are devastating for children - it's a pipeline out of education and into juvenile detention, child removal, health and mental health problems, and we have seen children die homeless. More than half of all evictions from public housing are Aboriginal families.

"Many of these Aboriginal families are Stolen Generations survivors and their children, carrying high levels of intergenerational trauma. The Department of Communities should work with families and link them with the support they need to sustain their tenancies."

Ms Davis said eviction to homelessness is "a very poor public policy response, which makes existing issues worse and compounds the impact on the community".

"It is unfair, unjust and, we will ask the WA Supreme Court to find, unlawful to evict families to homelessness without a fair hearing and without looking to the children's needs."

A Department of Communities spokesperson told National Indigenous Times they could not comment on the specific cases because they are currently before the court.

"Where a tenant is at risk of eviction, Communities will increase contact with the client and

link them with relevant support services to help address the issues impacting their tenancy

and, in most cases, people remedy the issues impacting their tenancy," he said.

"'Without Grounds' or 'no-grounds' is a limited legal term which does not mean there are not

substantiated reasons for eviction to proceed. Termination action, including following the non-renewal of fixed term tenancies, is considered a measure of last resort, only to be taken to ensure the safety of the community, especially adjoining neighbours when all other efforts to preserve the tenancy have failed.

"Without grounds terminations are rarely issued and are usually the outcome of significant community safety concerns where the tenant has failed to address or remedy these issues."

The Department spokesperson said it is important to note that the decision to terminate a tenancy agreement ultimately sits with the Magistrate, who will only make an order for vacant possession if satisfied that there has been a breach of the tenancy agreement, and that the tenant has been given every opportunity to rectify the breach and has failed to do so.

"In most cases, where engagement occurs, clients can remedy their Termination Notice. Termination proceedings are only initiated when tenants repeatedly or egregiously fail to utilise all the opportunities provided to them to resolve tenancy concerns," he said.

"Evictions from public housing have reduced substantially reduced under the current government, however sometimes despite all engagement and supports provided, termination action has to be undertaken to ensure the safety of the community, especially adjoining neighbours.

"Last year, there were less than 50 bailiff evictions across Western Australia from more than 32,000 public housing tenancies."