Reading the ABC’s latest Jeremiad about student housing, three thoughts immediately occurred to me.
Firstly: yes, slumlords are scumbags. We all knew that, nothing new. Still, some of the stuff they’re getting away with these days plumb new depths.
Rohan Beck knew it would be tough finding a place to rent in Sydney – but he did not think he would be flatting with a woman who lived in a “shed”.
The university student had been desperately searching for a room when he found a representative for a “student housing provider” who had a share house room available for $340 per week in the inner west.
The room came with air conditioning and a balcony, and Mr Beck was told if he paid an up-front $600 “reservation fee” he would have his rent reduced by $40.
No red flags when he was told an in-person inspection wasn’t possible. Then, surprise, surprise, he got shafted: forced to sign a new contract for a different and shittier room.
The property was managed by ShareSorted, a company that boasts a portfolio of more than 2,500 rooms across 200 properties […]
According to its website, common areas, including kitchens, living room and bathrooms, are professionally cleaned on a regular basis, while its in-house maintenance team ensures homes “are in tip-top shape”.
These services are not included in a ShareSorted contract seen by the ABC, which instead asks residents to clean communal spaces and ensure walls and ceilings are washed down to prevent mould.
But the second thought was: uni share accommodation that’s grotty and decrepit? Well, coo, stap me vitals! Never!
“The dust in that room was just too much to handle, I was just coughing and sneezing,” Mr Beck said, recalling when he first moved in.
He said repair requests were regularly ignored, and the house had broken toilet seats, missing floorboards and a hole in the ground covered with duct tape.
“It was dirty and gross … the condition of the entire house was really bad, all the bathrooms were dirty, they stunk,” he said.
“They had bugs all over the floor, mould just everywhere. The whole state of the house was in disrepair.
“There was one girl living in a shed, I think she paid about $240 a week [to live] out the back … it was a bit of a makeshift room.”
Which sounds like, well, just about every student share house anyone I ever knew lived in. Lordy, I can still smell the place my eldest brother and his hippy mates rented in the mid-’70s. The Young Ones may have exaggerated the Dickensian squalor of student share-housing, but… not by much.
My third thought was: 10 bucks says all the students complaining about the lack of affordable housing are gung-ho for mass immigration.
Fredy Pulido […] who came to Australia to study English, said he turned to ShareSorted because it was more affordable compared to other student accommodation providers and there were no waiting lists […]
“From my perspective, [ShareSorted's] business model appears designed to take advantage of people in vulnerable situations – particularly international students, new migrants, and low-income renters,” he said.
When we’re importing the equivalent of the entire population of Adelaide every couple of years, what do they expect?
Which still doesn’t give scumbag slumlords the right to wantonly rip people off. But the law of supply and demand gives them the power.
