No room for me here

I live where there's a real mix of people, and love the place, have lived there for ten years. But rents around Sydney are becoming silly. This flat has a vintage value and I feel at home, although its a bit seedy, a bit run down, but it is dry and rat free. And its $100 a week less rent than similar flats around the district.

The pressure on landlords in Sydney to get as much as they can is high enough to turn carbon into diamond. There's a shortage of all sorts of properties, and so it's a sellers' market. I guess I am due for a rent rise very soon. That will mean that this place will no longer be affordable. 

I retired a few months ago. My meager income from the pension is fixed, I cannot go with the economic flow. Time perhaps to move. Perhaps to look for government assisted accommodation.

 I had my first interview with Department of Housing. They call their new improved client service the Housing Pathway. More like The Yellow Brick Road.

Along the way of applying for admission to the land of aging munchkins, I pass a person with no brain, a person with no heart and a person with no initiative

To gain admission I have been given pile of paperwork to fill in, and a list of twenty bits of evidence needed to prove that I am who I say I am

As explained to me: I am applying for housing assistance at the wrong time. It appears that the NSW Govt housing is so badly designed and built, that they must rebuild it. That means moving everyone out of their flats and houses in derelict public housing while it is rebuilt or renovated.

No wonder there’s a general shortage of rental places in this state, if such a large portion of accommodation is unsuitable, and no longer available. The shortage forces ordinary non-yet accommodated people to face higher rents in the private sector, until they, like me, can’t afford the place they are already living in, and become emergency accommodation cases! Or move to a dying town the far outback in the back of beyond, where population and the demand for places are in decline 

People on the waiting list for a place can’t move interstate while they are waiting, or they’ll lose their place in the queue for non-existent accommodation. Catch 22

I am now redirected to other agencies to apply for a place to live

Next week I’ll face the first of the private agencies, armed with my pile of filled in forms and evidence.