Flat out of luck

This was written partly on location: the shittiest location ever.

Today, my 22-year-old son and his same-age partner moved out of the flat they've lived in for several months, even though their lease doesn't end for a few weeks. I offered to help clean. It was the first time I'd been inside. 

When I set foot in the place, the smell hit me first. I paused just a second before moving involuntarily into a hard out full decibel mum-squawk, like a car alarm going off in the night. Although the spiders seemed happy enough, this place was a frickin disgrace. There was mould on every surface, and I do mean EVERY surface - and this in the height of summer.

[Photo description: The only part of the room with enough sunlight that my phone camera did the mould justice]

Was it the kids' fault for just being a bit useless, for failing to show personal responsibility? Turns out they'd been diligently scrubbing the walls every four weeks. I challenge you to find any responsible adult who does that in their own home, by choice at least. I could see the swipe marks the kids had made, grubby rainbow shapes in the intractable black filth.

And they'd done exactly what they were told by the landlord, running the dehumidifier - at their own cost, of course. Now, a dehumidifier uses up to $1.22 a day in electricity, and that might sound like only a little, but when every room in a flat needs a dehumidifier it soon adds up. And the dehumidifier advice is bullshit anyway. If your house is routinely so damp it needs one, a dehumidifier won't help you. Your home likely isn't fit for habitation.

Let's return to cost. This room is $320 a week. To put that in perspective, my mortgage repayments on my previous house - a whole house I part-owned until a few months ago - cost only a little more. Welcome to the piss-take we call intergenerational responsibility. And that's a LOT of money for these kids right now. They're living on one hospo wage while my boy searches for a job, even as the local labour market sinks like a stone.

Yes, this too shall pass: these two have enough advantage that they'll climb the financial ladder in time. In that respect, they’re luckier than many. But I don’t accept that the bottom rung of this ladder should entail this sort of misery. Because that’s what we’re talking: misery. The kids’ decision to move wasn’t taken lightly - they’re still paying rent on a room that can’t live in - but because of mental health. They are lucky, I suppose, it wasn’t physical health too: the inhalation of spores into asthmatic lungs, frantic trips to the ED in the middle of the night.

They’d tried to negotiate down the price of the room, some kind of consolation, when it became clear the space wasn’t suitable for human beings. The landlord said, but it’s five minutes from town. Yeah, nah. The flat is in Hataitai. He was kind enough not to charge extra for adding insult to injury.

[Photo description: Here I am, cleaning mould from the ceiling with a squeegee mop. The shot’s angled so you can’t see my face contorted with rage]

Some will read this and think to themselves, they’ve lived in shitty flats and it did them no harm. Maybe, even, it was character-building. I’ve got a few things to say in reply.

First, it did do some of us harm - especially those with health issues or disabilities. Second, our squalor cost only a fraction of our incomes: in my case, a third of my student allowance. And when I went on to get a job after I’d studied, owning my own home was within my grasp. Third, you can call it what you like, but it was still a failure in the duty of care of the generation ahead of us - crassness and greed, glossed over with the same silly and nostalgic words we still use today.

I don’t know who the landlord is. I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s probably enjoying his interest deductibility from inside a warm and dry home. But if you’re reading, mate, know this.

If I’d had your child in my care, I would have done better: if not out of decency, then purely out of shame.