Bits of the world are really good. I can see a really good bit right now, even as I type. In the lane behind my house magpies are fighting over a scrap of bread and the rain has cleared. It may even be safe to say that the lane behind my house is relatively peaceful. I suppose that will have to do for the time being.
As soon as I zoom out a bit and consider the neighbourhood it gets a bit more drear. We have just had another flood, on top of a couple of other floods. All after a really big flood in 2022. In the intervening years, five hundred and seventy nearby houses have been purchased by the government and now lie abandoned. If they had tenants, they have been evicted. So, I live in an eerie wasteland that was once a happy suburb.
In the nearby streets most houses are quite obviously derelict. They are surrounded by mesh fencing with ‘Keep Out’ signs on each panel. Only a few holdouts remain. In my area only nine houses are still legitimately occupied, then another eight – all right down in the gully at the end of my street – have been taken over by squatters. While up at the other end of the road the old Winsome Hotel has been transformed into an emergency accommodation centre that mostly caters to the alcoholic drifters and mentally ill of the district.
This time around, the squatters were the first to be flooded out. Now, after the water has mostly receded only a few have returned. But it looks like it won’t last long. The state government is using the cover of their ‘flood response’ to kick them all out and then bulldoze all the houses down that end of the street. Which is fair enough for a government that is made up of home owners and landlords. However, to me – a tenant who is still paying full market rates for my little patch of paradise – it seems to be verging on insanity. If I had a heart, I might also observe that it all appears to be utterly callous and stupid and makes me weep with shame for what my country has become.
I have watched the suburb slowly empty as the state government has provided all of my neighbours with hundreds of thousands of dollars to go make a new life for themselves in a safe place. A generous offer that was also extended to all of the landlords in the area. Their tenants have been evicted. We are soon going to be evicted. Apparently, as we do not own property, we were not victims of the flood. We may have lost everything that we owned, our place to live, and our settled existence, but because we do not own property that does not count.
The Premier described the squatters as being foreign tourists and blow-ins. Which is generally true. I cannot fault his observational skills. None of these people were in the area when all these hundreds of houses were occupied. Additionally, purchasing these hundreds of houses to leave them empty, in the middle of a housing crisis, has cost the state government hundreds of millions of dollars. So, from the government’s perspective people such as myself, who own no property, as well as the squatters living down the end of the street, are quite obviously in the way. We have to move on. Fair enough.
However, with all that being said, I just thought that I might write this short note to the Premier of NSW to say that I think the response over the last few years has been calamitous for anyone who does not own a business, a home, or several homes. It has served to demonstrate that we poor people are expendable second-class citizens. I have always understood this to be the case in an abstract sort of fashion but when both your own government as well as mother nature continue to repeatedly grind your face in your own impotence, it can be a little dispiriting.
Moreover, Mr Premier, I have met all the squatters and in the main I think they are very nice people. They are just looking for somewhere to kip. Yet the unwarranted targeting of these individuals has served to foster an atmosphere in our once happy town where it is dangerous to even discuss the topic in public. I got into an argument with a longtime friend who works at a local gas station when I suggested that they were just a group of poor people who were looking for a safe and dry place to live. I haven’t gone back since as I feel embarrassed for arguing. I feel petty and ashamed. Not for my opinions but rather for what has become of our once beautiful and peaceful suburb. I acknowledged that I have to simply grow up and face reality and cast aside any delusion that Australia is a compassionate and caring place to live. In the modern Australia, apparently, poor people do not have a right to a roof over their heads, nor can they rightfully claim to be a flood victim.
So, for the time being I continue to pay market rates for my house. I have been told I will be formally evicted sometime next month, but if I am lucky, I may be allowed to stay for up to another two months.
I can’t complain; I am not a property owner or a landlord.
Poor fellow my country.
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Well put Jim.
As I see it, the mutual obligation concept kicks in at the wrong level.
It should only kick in after a citizen has been provided with sufficient basics for life.
Free of conditions.
We have the wealth to do it.
Access to affordable housing, to either rent or buy or build, is controlled by lenders and 3 tiers of govt, if you can call them government.
All I see is a scorched-earth policy unfolding.
Flood-zones should never have been given over to housing development, but that unicorn bolted. Now govts are buying back land that was stupidly developed. Someone made a profit. Therefore, it’s all good.
Edward Griffin’s doco ‘Creature from Jekyll Island’ explains the scam that is reserve banking by private corps. The doco ‘The Secret of Oz’ by Ben Still, is in a similar vein. Both are on YouTube.
The scam revolves around creating credit, and therefore debt, out of thin air.
Banks facilitate the scam using a promissory note signed by a ‘borrower’.
Therefore, it’s all good.
The next generation, with little hope to own a home, are standing on prime scorched-earth real estate. How current authorities continue to treat housing needs is telling. It’s basically legislated poverty for the next gen. Above all, it’s legal.
Honest Government Ad | Our Last Fair Election?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kYIojG707w
Poor fellow my country, indeed. 🙁 I met Jim, briefly, a number of years ago, long after his skid row alcoholic phase; he won’t remember me, but he might recall the intermediary, Twiz, and the Nimbin context, as well as the Green Fairies.
Lismore, once thriving, is wrecked, a sodden ruin peopled by a heartbroken community who’ve been left to pick up the scraps of their lives following the devastation of the city in the 2022 floods. In typically Australian fashion, the rebuilding, rehousing, rejuvenation, revivification and renovation necessary to give a semblance of return to normality for the thousands of people affected has proceeded at something less than at a one-legged snail’s pace. Instead, the burdened citizens must endure the reality of what has become the norm, living amidst the ruins and suffering the consequences of bureaucratic indolence and inefficiency. It’s very sad… this very Australian tragedy.
Having lived in both South Korea and China, two countries well-accustomed to disasters both man-made & natural, I can vouch from extensive conversations with locals that when things go sideways, all stops are pulled out to rescue & repair, and the jobs aren’t over until the work is done… maximum urgency, maximun efficiency. With few exceptions (particularly in Korea under martial law & autocratic leaders), the prevailing policy is that the peoples’ quality of life is the number one priority.