THIS IS NOT A DRILL.
Desperate AF renters who can’t even with the cost of living in Australia are willing to fork out up to $130 a week to live in TENTS pitched in people’s’ living rooms, backyards and even balconies.
Dodgy – and often highly illegal – shared living arrangements are popping up all over the place as landlords/renters’ get creative with ways to cover rent i.e. cramming as many housemates as possibly into the same living space to subsidise exorbitant living costs.
The Age came across a number of online ads spruiking tents-for-rent with a price tag of between $90 to $130 a week in Melbourne, which is just fucking ridiculous.
One, posted on Gumtree, asks for $90 a week to live on the enclosed balcony of newly-built block The Emerald on Albert Road, Southbank.
“The tent is very comfortable. It has electricity and proper thick mattress bed inside, [with] heater provided as well,” says the ad.
Still a tent, but.
The advertiser reckons he lived in the tent for six months while renting out the inside rooms to save money.
“I loved it. I work in a suit every day and that’s not me. I’m completely the opposite, more of a country-type person,” he said.
OF COURSE YOU’RE SWEET WITH LIVING ON A BALCONY, BECAUSE YOU HAVE “COUNTRY” TENDENCIES.
In another ad posted to a Korean classifieds site, a tent pitched inside a two-bedroom apartment in inner-city Docklands that’s shared with six other people has a going rate of $130 a week – more exxy than the other because the lucky occupant gets to access the building’s extras, like a gym and swimming pool.
The tent has been partitioned from the living room with a plastic red screen for total ~privacy~.
Don’t laugh, because it’s already been snapped up by some poor sucker who has to wake up to the sounds of percolating coffee every morning.
It’s not just Melbourne: remember when that dude rented a tent on the balcony of his apartment in Sydney‘s Newtown for $215 a week?
There aren’t actually any local building laws that prevent people subletting apartment space or sleeping in a tent on private property, but Consumer Affairs Victoria *does* require tenants receive written permission before subletting.
It’s also illegalz for apartments to be separately rented to more than three people without being a registered boarding house which, BTW, none of these are.
FFS, ‘Straya, can you get your housing market shit sorted?
Sincerely,
your balcony-dwelling citizens.
Via The Age.
