Almanac Life: Stumbling into the housing crisis

 

During my adult life I have bought and sold six houses without any real understanding of what I was doing.

 

I think it was simply that Australian mentality of ‘The Dream’ of home ownership that is pumped into us through successive governments. It’s part of what it means to be Australian, the lucky and entitled country that we are.

 

The irony of this message governments of both sides of politics ram down our throats is that they are constantly telling us to tighten our belts, whilst encouraging their constituents to continue buying houses.

 

When I bought my first home in 1988 with my partner at the time in Melbourne’s outer west, it cost $81,500. Our combined income was approx. $65,000.  Interest rates were a ridiculous 18.5% and we still had to jump through a multitude of hoops before being approved to borrow approximately $40,000 after our deposit.

 

These days young couples can expect to pay a minimum of $700k in a treeless plain of a housing estate an hour from Melbourne with a combined income of between $100-$150k.

 

Now that the interest rate has risen to what seemingly is still the best interest rate on earth, these home owners are discovering mortgage creep and that spells trouble.

 

The banks will continue to lend more money knowing it can never be repaid, borrowers become delusional and go for the quick fix and suddenly there’s fighting and divorce.

 

When my own marriage collapsed thirteen years ago, my wife and I decided the best thing to do for our two kids was to amicably split and avoid lawyers. She took the house and its contents and I would take my Super.

 

It has worked out well for her thankfully and she is financially in a good place. I’m a month away from being able to access my Super so the wait will soon be over. I think it may be enough to fulfil some final travel before I cark it so I’m grateful for that.

 

After my separation I found myself homeless in Melbourne. I had a good job but most of my wage was heading back home for the kids and their schooling as well as paying off substantial mortgage creep that we had accumulated over the years.

 

I couch surfed at friends’ houses for months before moving into a bungalow in Melbourne’s East in the backyard of a semi-retired couple’s house. They usually rented this one of three bungalow’s out to international students but made an exception to take on a dishevelled forty-seven year old divorcee just this once.

 

It would be a three year stay in a home the size of a shoe box (“but it were my shoe box”, I can hear a Yorkshireman say :)) and life was made so much easier by the kindness of the owners Hazel and Joe.

 

I had a long distance relationship with my partner Lynda for a few years before she decided to join me in the city after teaching in regional Victoria for over twenty years.

 

I went to one home open for a rental property and couldn’t believe the number of people that were queuing up to inspect it. I returned to the bungalow that night disillusioned at the task that lay ahead. I saw that Hazel and Joe were home and popped my head in.

 

“Hey, you don’t know anyone whose looking to rent a house do you?” “Well as it happens we have one in Chadstone that will be available in a few weeks.”

 

I couldn’t believe my luck. It was an old commission home but it had big rooms, high ceilings and excellent floorboards. Typically, Joe and Hazel spruced everything up for us and and we have lived here happily for almost nine years.

 

That, sadly is coming to an end. The house is effectively Joe’s Super after working as a self-employed builder his entire life. The auction was a success and we are so happy for Hazel and Joe as they continue their love of travel.

 

So we have now found ourselves in the search for another rental and what we have discovered is the reality of the housing crisis.

 

We have been targeting a weekly rental of approximately $420 a week. There is something quite degrading having to line up to inspect a rental property.

 

What makes that experience worse is when the agent is twenty minutes late and turns up in his Porsche chewing gum and doesn’t acknowledge the existence of anyone who has gone to the trouble of registering his or her time with this parasite.

 

Then there’s the property which upon inspection looks absolutely nothing like the photos. We saw one a few days ago that a serial killer surely leased previously.

 

It was disgusting and no wonder the agent had her head bowed the entire time presenting such a pig sty of a home and charging $400 a week to some desperate family.

 

I heard a report the other day that there are 272,000 homeless in Australia and 2,000,000 vacant homes.

 

This isn’t new. It’s been a massive problem that politicians have been sweeping under the carpet for decades, much like the issues surrounding Indigenous Australians.

 

In 1998, my workplace in Perth raised $10,000 to pay for a marquee used by the Perth City Mission on Christmas Day. It was and is an annual event providing somewhere for the homeless to come and eat and socialise.

 

A few of us worked that day and what struck me were the numbers. Perth isn’t a big city but there were 2000 people there, many of whom weren’t your stereotypical rough sleepers, but simply working poor.

 

So having found a couple of reasonable places to apply for, we filled in the application forms on line. Now, we would consider ourselves fairly computer literate, but this process to a migrant or someone without much education would feel like writing the Magna Carta.

 

You could see how quickly these applications can get whittled down. I’m sure there are many decent human beings with families who stand no chance when ‘Joe Poser’ with the Porsche and the never ending PK chewy scours the applications.

 

We still haven’t heard from any agents that we applied for three weeks ago. Thanks to Hazel and Joe we have a contingency plan. They have kindly offered up a bungalow and we can move our stuff into a storage shed until we find something.

 

We’re the lucky ones. It’s a basic human right that citizens have a roof over their head regardless of who you are or where you come from.

 

The United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights has thirty articles that mean well but are virtually ignored by governments around the world. Article 25 pertains to a section of humanity that we the lucky country can’t seem to grasp:

 

Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

 

Yes we have safety nets in Australia that are the envy of comparable countries like the US, but have you seen the homelessness in the US?

 

We shouldn’t be anything like that given our wealth and resources. The social damage caused by homelessness is terrifying. Walking around Melbourne’s CBD is like a rough sleeping hurdle race. We need more public housing!

 

Dear Albo,

Stop spending insane money on submarines that have a life span of ten minutes in an actual war and focus on the core issues of what it means to be Australian. A fair go for everyone.

End the constant rhetoric to young people to keep buying houses they will never afford and show them how to save first and hold banks accountable for their lending procedures.

Less focus on buying houses and concentrate on affordable renting please. Our next generation will stand no chance without action now.

 

 

Read more from Ian Wilson HERE

 

 

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