When a real estate owner requests proof of the housing crisis
Nobody likes to see people suffer, and the lack of affordable housing and affordable rental, as experienced by Narelle, is nothing short of endemic. Narelle is a long-time reader and supporter of The AIMN and without hesitation we have encouraged her to tell her story here.
Continued from Part 1: Seeking to rent in a housing crisis, open to ideas
I am currently amid a surreal encounter with the owner of my real estate agency. They have been informed by the property manager I am having a hard time finding another rental, and that I have requested an extension till another rental is found and a lease signed. The agency owner has requested I provide “evidence” that community housing will be hard to source in the middle of a national housing crisis. Apparently, they need “evidence” of my situation to present the property owner. The property manager is a good person, sincere in their efforts to help. Personally, I would consider the email the agency owner wrote as an opportunity to reflect upon the ethics of their employer.
The agency owner has asked a community housing CEO ‘friend’ for advice, and they advised me to register for community housing and to see if I qualified, and “the best way to do that was to attend” a nearby office. They were even kind enough to provide the address of one close to me.
Next, I was advised to check out the crisis centres, and for some reason they just discovered the following fact: “unfortunately, one can only apply for these in the event they become homeless and not in advance.” At this point I am wondering where this is going.
I was then advised to contact a mainstream retirement housing specialist and request to speak to “……,” and say that they and their CEO friend referred me. They requested I ask if there was any ‘retirement villages/leasing options” available. They informed me they were impressed with the service because they only spent a short time on hold. One problem, at 48 years old I’m too young to qualify, and for those interested there is a 3-year waiting list at both locations, according to this particular retirement company.
There is a reason this option was mentioned; they were recently awarded for their services in this area. Got to give it to them, marketing an option they profit from in the middle of a housing crisis. This requires the establishment of a new award category. As for the title I am open to suggestions.
By now you are also wondering where this is going.
Now for the concluding communication. In this instance I will let the owner speak for themselves:
“I hope that the above is of some assistance. Please keep us posted as if you receive any assurance or information that you can qualify for government/community housing and there is a specific timeline as to when you are likely to get accommodation then we can go back to the owner with a more specific request for extension and some evidence to support that.”
It is no secret that the waitlist for community housing in Australia is broken, it is at a crisis point. It’s catastrophic. The standard spiel of the government’s community housing department is that they are not allowed to reveal, in writing, how long people must wait for state housing. I relayed the owners request to the lovely public servant handling my application, and she was kind enough to show me the paperwork and waitlist timeline. It is 13 years.
So how do I present the owner of an award winning, upscale real estate agency with written evidence of the housing crisis? If the timeline to receive government housing cannot be revealed, is there any hope I will receive an extension from a solvency specialist? The only solution is to call a state politician’s office and ask them to help.
I am not sure if this choice is going to blow up in my face, but there is a sense of satisfaction that I have taken them at their word, and respectfully completing their request. If we are going to have an open, respectful and honest dialogue it is only right I provide the information from a source they cannot dispute. I must say this politician’s assistant was quite beguiled by my request and upon seeing said email, was unable to forget what she saw. Neither am I.
Coincidently, (not really, I checked out her boss’s recent activities) their ‘Honourable’ boss delivered a speech on homelessness in the House of Representatives. She is going to put together a letter for the real estate owner, containing the state’s most recent statistics on the average waitlist for community housing.
What happens next, who knows? If this is the future of real estate, it is going to be a bumpy ride for everyone, and if you rent, you had better start preparing for Dante’s seven levels of rental hell to expand.
What convinced me we are in Dante’s fourth level of rental hell is the quarterly newsletter they kindly email. It boasts the 2022/2023 annual rise of for rent prices is 13.2%, and their high rental returns is 1.2% above the metro average “it is an optimistic time for investors” apparently.
The tactic employed by the owner of my real-estate agency is Gaslighting 101, and I cannot pretend that it will lead to a lease extension. But what I can do is approach the request with respect, the respect that is not being given to me. The reality is, I will need their reference when I eventually enter back into the rental market. The desire to tell them to go “fuck themselves” must remain in my head. I hope that when they are in dire straits, they are treated with kindness instead of the scorn and derision they themselves have delivered. Or have I got this wrong? Are they so removed from the reality of the housing crisis, that they have no idea how bad it is, if so, I apologise.
The question remains though, why request evidence of the obvious?
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7 comments
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Fred
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Teiresias
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Ill fares the land
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Williambtm
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Fed up with BS politics
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New England Cocky
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Karen
Return to home pageWhen the F is this government going to stand up and start helping people in desperate need,if you cant do it,let me take over,the solutions are simple,but i guess the problem is that your also simple,what has happened to this once great country,its like we are living in a third world country now,do our politicians really care about us,i don’t think so.
I have been trying to understand how the RBA decides how to raise interest rate to such an extent that large numbers of people cannot afford to buy a house or rent somewhere to live.
We have reference to wars overseas, cost of fuel, lack of food, people not paying income tax, cunning book work.
There are people involved in economics but who are unable to tell people what to do. People are thinking they have nowhere to go.
Denis Bright has said: “Throughout the Voice campaign, the mainstream media largely endorsed the claim of the social and racial divisiveness over acceptance of the Voice proposal. The outcome of the campaign are now history.”
Australian citizens have been conned – and have not even recognised the deception. The NO campaign presented a false set of claims that should never have been published in the referendum booklet: it was set of lies. It suited the mentality of so much of mainstream media which tells lies as if it is free speech.
Things have not been done properly in the past and so many of the past failures people are now spending their time out of office ridiculing people as if those accused people in office are the ones responsible.
I fail to understand how the right-wing failures can face the public. And the free speech practitioners should learn to speak the truth.
To my mind, we are in an era of “tipping points” across a range of areas. In health, education and housing, where we are now is the result of several decades of inept but deliberate government policies both state and federal, and government largess that eviscerated services and, in the case of housing, pushed prices up to levels that are almost reflective of a collective insanity, but certainly reflective of housing and property becoming a speculative asset, aided and abetted by cheap money, taxation subsidies (e.g., for negative gearing and the increase in the capital gains tax discount – blame the other McSmirky – Costello for that bit of genius) and a seemingly endless stream of home owner subsidies. Add to the mix foreign investors (we know mostly from where), a flood of laundered money and high immigration levels that suit some purposes but generally just end up destroying amenity in the capitals (Melbourne was once my favourite city to visit, now it has become as big a s**t hole as Adelaide). Adelaide wants to merge its two biggest universities and one of the stated goals is to boos the numbers of foreign students. This, of course, suits “men in suits”, but no-one bothers to ask the people adversely affected by the increase. Where we are is horrendous, but it is no surprise when you look at the conflation of the various factors that led us to this. We have come toa tipping point and show no sign of waking up to ourselves – property prices continue to surge and governments are letting it happen – in no small part they WANT it to happen, despite the pain it causes the Narelle’s of the world.
In reply to Ill fares the land. During the`10 years of woeful Lib/Nat party governance, the homeless numbers were quietly increasing beyond all expectation. That same 10 years was devoid of any attempt of alleviating or any prospect of momelessness being dealt with in a timely manner.
I do not recall the Mad Abbot concerning himself about welfare housing at any time, nor did Mr Harbor-Side Mansions recognize anyone other than his effete contemporaries, nor did the Pentecostal Prattler & its funding machine to the Hillsong knee-benders… ever consider the plight of the Australian people, despite these 3 persons collectively pissing up half a Trillion dollars of increased debt up against their dunny’s wall.
The current Labor government seemingly too busy providing funding grants & approvals to the likes of Glencore & its polluting coalmines dotted across our nation.
(Glencore also runs a Cobalt mine in the Republic of the Congo with their hundreds of starveling employees along with their children barely earning for their daily bread.)
How is it that the Labor government of today know nothing of the truth underlying the overseas corporate mining entities best known for their aversion to paying their due taxes on their huge incomes generated in our country?
Then these same are crying poor & are in despair, their collective of overseas-owned mining conglomerates including the Gold miners, all pissing &; moaning about having to pay their super-tax levies on 30% of their massive annual profits.
So, no amount of honest Labor party care is being directed to our nation’s homeless working people, of their paying the high rental costs demanded by the Shylock landlords & or their real estate agents.
However, be heartened everybody cry our government, as Multi-Billions of our taxpayer dollars are going into the pockets (by courtesy of Lib/Nat party inviting snooks) of the USA owned Arms & Weapons Manufacturing Corporations, just in case great armada’s of Chinese Battleships and Aircraft Carriers come rocketing down into Australia.
Or so tells the US propaganda machine installed just up the road a bit, from our lavish Parliament house in the ACT.
Thank you for sharing Narelle’s continuous respectful efforts to find a solution to the problem, it is not a simple one, as the other commenters point out. Blaming decades of government policies will not put a roof over her head, to state the obvious.
Most of the rest of us plebs don’t have blind trust funds or lobbyist mates to try and turn a screw on the morally corrupt politicians who have allowed this to culminate over, as some point out, decades.
It is all very well to quote research and statistical studies (the magic of numbers), but the fact is, unless there are more than surface consequences for such deception (such as being called a bad boy or girl by the media), this will continue, ad infinitum.
What’s the solution?
Another pitiful story to add to my collection from over 40 years of dealing with real estate agents, that confirm the old rural adage ”never think an agent is acting in your own best interests”. This especially applies to real estate agents selling or leasing properties. There are very few exceptions ….. about as rare as hen’s teeth.
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It is debatable whether real estate agents as a class of citizens are lower than a snake’s belly or compete for that position with incumbent LIARBRAL$ and NOtional$ politicians.
Housing unaffordability is by design. Now 30 percent of people rent and are unlikely to ever buy. That is a useful voting block to pit against the other 70 percent of people who ‘own’ a home or two, or in the case of one guy mentioned on Q&A a while back, 340 plus investment properties. All that is needed to ignite a further breakdown of social order is to exploit that divide when the time is right. Not that I’m saying Lib-Labs are good at exploiting divisions in society, I don’t need say that.