Social housing tenants say they have been getting a wave of strongly-worded termination notices in inner-city Sydney.

Peter "Pierre" Gawronski, better known as "the bird man" around his Surry Hills neighbourhood, was told in a letter from the NSW Department of Communities and Justice that he was $262.22 in arrears.

The letter, which he received two weeks ago, informed him he could be evicted as soon as March 6 — today's date — if he doesn't pay the money.

"I was just stunned and then very angry and then it was like, I have to get to the bottom of this," he told the ABC's PM program.

"It's about the scariest document you can receive from your landlord."

Mr Grawronski is a common sight around the neighbourhood, with his emerald Green Eclectus parrot, Caesar.

He said he believed he owed less than the amount the department stated and he hasn't been given enough time to sort it out.

Local NSW MP Jenny Leong said Mr Gawronski had been swept up in a wave of eviction notices being sent by the department.

"NSW Government land and housing are acting in a way that not even the big banks or the worst private landlords would behave," she said.

The Greens MP said she has been told that as many as 30 termination letters are currently being sent by the department each week.

A spokeswoman from the NSW Department of Communities and Justice said the department does not seek to evict social housing tenants for rental arrears and tries to work with them to agree an affordable repayment plan.

They said the recent letters do not follow a change in policy, and the number of notices sent out is not unusual.

Social housing tenants not covered by COVID moratoriums

During COVID-19, the NSW Government introduced new measures to restrict when landlords can evict. However, tenants in social housing were not covered. For those tenants, rent is calculated based on a percentage of their income.

But Ms Leong said any leniency the department may have offered during COVID-19 may be coming to an end.

"Concerningly, what we are hearing from NSW housing is that this is part of some new directive that they have powers to do now that the COVID emergency measures that were providing protections for tenants from eviction have been lifted and that this is a new strategy from the NSW housing officers to actually try to get people to catch up on their rental arrears in a very stressful way."

Dr Chris Martin, an expert in housing from the University of NSW, said the threat of eviction could have a huge impact on social housing tenants.

"Termination proceedings should only be as a last resort," he said.

"People who are evicted from social housing are very often evicted into homelessness.

"That might mean either sleeping on the couch of a family member, who might themselves be living in public housing, or it means the even more unstable and risky situations where a person is either looking at boarding houses or sleeping rough."

Dr Martin said demand for social housing and the sheer amount of disadvantaged people in there represents a failure of the private rental market to cater for low-income tenants.

"Private landlords are not adequately catering for low income households, and by and large they don't see it as their job to do that, so having a much more expansive provision of social housing would be a solution to so many of our housing problems."

Mr Gawronski said people in his block have a range of mental health issues that could affect their ability to engage with the termination notices and vulnerable to the extra stress the notices could bring on.

"Adding to the panic, adding to the trauma, which will add to the number of people self-harming."

He is still hopeful he will be able to settle the matter with the department so that he and his birds can stay in their home but is worried that the Government will eventually redevelop his social housing block or sell it off.

"Everyone in this neighbourhood spends most of their week talking about how they're going to move us out of here eventually, that's the elephant in the room."

The department has said it has no plans to do this.