Landlord

As Promised

This is as promised my fifth post in a session of writing. I’m on a roll. I might even try to finish open a more positive note. No promises see what I can do?

So, to give some context from all the things regarding my previous posts. For the last seven years I’ve rented an apartment through an affordability scheme. It was to take people off the public housing list but help landlords more than the tenant’s long term. The scheme ran for ten years, of which I benefited only the last seven. The landlords of new developments for a period were asked to offer up several properties to be managed by the government in exchange for cheaper rent to the tenant and what they lost in rent they got back at tax time. You gotta have money to make money, right? It is to say, I got to live in a complex with normal people not in a public housing silo. It is also the time to say when I got into this housing arrangement some bright spark, (Note sarcasm) despite my telling him not to, he had me removed from the housing list.

Every year I had to sign a new lease and provide financials and income statements to prove I was the only resident and I still qualified as low enough income to qualify for the scheme. What a MOTHER FUCKER. Mind you I had to do it every year for the seven years I was there. Honestly, it’s a different mindset. Remember the days you just needed to prove you could afford the rent?

In the time I’ve been on the Disability Support Pension I’ve had rent assistance which despite my rent going up every time, mostly initiating me having to relocate. It’s like the government that decides how much rent assistance needs to be doesn’t pay rent, or live in the real world, or care to learn how much rent is. We know the answer to all these things. No, they don’t!

In the last twenty years, I’ve rented houses for 4 years, each HOUSES WITH HOUSEMATES and at the end of the fourth year I’ve not been able to negotiate out of a rent increase, the landlord situation changes and I’ve needed to pay exorbitant rent or move. So, I’ve moved.

The house I rented the first time I moved with my disability. I struggled to find something in my price range and I was literally paying someone’s mortgage. I only had housemates for four months of the year. I stayed there and even asked my dad, who helped me a few times to cover the rent even though I’d bankrupt him.

That household situation had me move further out again, to never want housemates again. The first housemate, I ended up taking to VCAT, AMD. The second that lived with me for three months and was years my senior and had a huge reduction on her portion of the rent and had her son practically live with us. No more. There was the assumption, the government was paying my rent and my lifestyle. So, she thought to take advantage of that.

The last of the scheme I was in I paid $317 a week. At the end of the scheme my rent was to be $550 per week. They wanted me to sign a lease and there was no way I was doing that. If I was going to pay that much rent it was going to be somewhere nicer and quieter. I paid two weeks of that rent and timed it perfectly to get the fuck out.

I later checked the rental listing and it was advertised as $500 per week. Just scum, I know this post is a lot of specific financially, but necessary.

I could have afforded the scheme amount of rent in a reasonably comfortable lifestyle until sixty, when my income changes and I could no longer keep a roof over my head or the lights and internet on.

Not giving up all my things that tell people who I was/am/aspire to return to or just giving in and moving to some shit-fuck suburb, I wouldn’t survive in around people who HAVE ASPIRED TO NOT DO BETTER OR CARE, or to do better in life.

This post has not ended on a positive note has it.

home-2

Home

I currently and have only ever lived as an independent adult in private rentals. And obviously in recent years on a Disability Pension and the rental market increasing, it’s been ever so much more challenging, but I manage. I decided 3 years ago, I was done having to have a housemate and for the last 3 years, I’ve lived alone.

There are many pitfalls to having gotten to this point in my life and still being alone, but it was not for a lack of trying.

Anyway, currently I live in a spacious unit on a large block with only 2 other units. Luckily I’m at the front so have street views. The other units have had turnover since I moved in and while Unit 2 are younger and only think of themselves, the back unit has a lovely older woman and her younger son. They are my people.

My landlords are ‘wogs’ (keeping in mind, my father is Italian therefore I’m allowed to use that term) and they live close by. Not next door, but close enough I consider them neighbours. I would drop in treats and soup and such when my landlady was in hospital. I did so because that’s the kind of community I want to live in.

landlord-2

Anyway enough background.

Many things have fallen into disrepair, before I moved here due to lack of upkeep! My landlords don’t like spending money and recently came down with a plastic stool and a fork to fix my front lounge blind.

I had been asking them to attend to it for some time. My side lounge blind having been replaced about a year into my tenancy here.

broken-blinds-1

Sometimes I have to go through a very elaborate process to have anything fixed here.

You already heard in ‘The Horror’ about my new Hot Water Service.

With the blind, my landlord came one day and I suggested he open the blind and while with great pain to my one good hand, I could open and close it. (It’s a block-out blind) the one with the chain on the side he completely F.U.B.A.R.D. it!

It would never work again!

Yeah Helen gets a new blind.

Still not my point.

My issue is this; something needs doing, I call my Property Manager. He steels himself for the call to the landlords because they like to yell! (Not my problem)

grumpy-old-man

The landlords are always nice to my face.

‘No matter! You tell us and we fix!’ Those landlords. But they are elderly (over 70) and I don’t want them to hurt themselves trying to fix things so when their eldest son picks his kids up from Grandparents, Daycare/After kinda care, I often stop to say ‘Hello’ and mention something that needs fixing (he really should have learned by now not to park in front of my home!)

He always says to call the agent!

The landlords always say their kids are the owners yet they deal with the agents!

And the agent says things will come up when he does the next inspection.

I’ve been here 3+ years and by law should have an inspection every 6 months.

He has done 2! Of which nothing or ½ of nothing gets fixed!

The Property Manager told me years ago, when they have good tenants, they like to leave them alone. When my landlady came to see about fixing the blind, about a month ago, she told me “we got home from out Geelong Beach Holiday Home to a $1,000.00 Hot Water Service bill!”

And she told me “It broke her heart!”

It sounds much better with a good Italian accent – trust me!

I wish my rent was $1,000.00 per month!