Extract from The Guardian
Watching the speculation mania you wonder whether the greater madness is keeping out of, or getting into, The Market.
‘These aren’t just assets. These are homes. And we all have the right to feel we have one.’
Last modified on Sat 22 May 2021 16.09 AEST
We had a leak a little while ago. Above our kitchen after heavy rains a ceiling stain turned into a drip and we called the landlord. He was good about it. He started sending over tradespeople, and came to inspect the damage. And then he started measuring our backyard. A granny flat or subdivision might boost his investment. That’s when we started saving cardboard boxes.
We are not getting evicted. But we know we could. We know that should our lovely landlord decide to sell, to capitalise on the current phase of the never-ending house price boom, he need only give us a few weeks’ notice. And we’d be out.
We know because it’s happened before. In the past four years, our family has lived in three rental properties.
The first we left when the landlord tried to hike the rent after one year. The second we left when the landlord sold up to build her dream home down the coast. This last one we’ve been in for just over a year. And we’ve learnt not to get too comfortable.
We maintain the garden, but plant nothing. Instead we tend a millennial wall of house plants, which obscure the oddities of a house we can’t change. And which we take with us, in their various states of lusciousness or decline, from house to house. We literally cannot put down roots.
Despite the feverish reports of first home buyers initiating the current wave of house price rises, home ownership in Australia is declining and in no age group as rapidly as in the 25 to 44 year-old age bracket. The latest census figures show that two out of five 35 to 44 year-olds do not live in a home they even pretend to own.
We watch the housing mania wondering whether the greater madness is keeping out of, or getting into, The Market.
Should our landlord decide to sell, to capitalise on the price boom, he need only give us a few weeks’ notice
All the while, we daily (twice, three times) scan real estate sites for rental properties we might move into at short notice. We’re cognizant of the fact that the purpose of our current home is to make money for someone else, and if it doesn’t make enough or more money could be made by selling, we may need to begin unfolding the cardboard boxes stored in the shed.
There’s delight, and a frantic text message, when a place within a workable distance from our kids’ school and daycare pops up in the search map. They’re rare. And then something like a fatalistic confusion when we sit down a few days later to look more closely at the place and find it vanished. Leased. You gotta be quick. You gotta be ready.
There have always been landlords, and there have always been tenants. Renting during a period of mass housing speculation, though, is to keep one eye on the door. It is to know that you may need to move, and that with each move you are shunted further and further away from buying something of your own. Further and further away from being able to paint a wall, mark your children’s height on a door frame and to finally stop moving.
It is to know that by your renting, you almost certainly guarantee that your children too will not own the place they live in.
For all the frustration, flux and peripatetic house plants, we remain fortunate. We are among those who can afford rent, and to whom real estate agents will let houses. Figures from just last month showed that only three rentals in the entire country were deemed affordable for a single person on jobseeker, meanwhile social housing waiting lists blow out and public housing tenants can wait years for a place to live.
As we engage in a non-stop national conversation about property, and chatter half in horror, half in delight, at Australia’s precise ranking among the most unaffordable housing markets in the world, the point of housing can get lost. These aren’t just assets. These are homes. And we all have the right to feel we have one.
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