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Adoption Certificate for Nellie, the Daily Thread numbat (with thanks to @Catfish)
Poor woman. Jesus, that is nuts. Reminds me of Regular Car Reviews' video on the PT Cruiser where he said something along the lines of "Everyone is just a few bad scrapes away from driving a PT Cruiser."
A bad stroke, a marriage that fails, an inability to work, and suddenly, you are cashing in your retirement and living in a van down by the river.
I'm doing a Big Lap right now. Working from my laptop as I go. I'm quite fortunate.
However, the sheer number of homeless people living in vans (if they're lucky) and cars is astounding.
This is a new phenomenon to Australia (at this scale), and I don't believe most people realise just how very many people there are living in their cars.
The regional towns lie bundaberg, grafton, etc are just loaded with people in this terrible situation.
Some years ago, I remember reading posts (can't remember where I saw them) from a guy who lived out if his car in Sydney.
He was doing it by choice to save money to get an apartment. He had a job, but didn't want to waste money on rent. He covered a lot of tips and tricks, and answered heaps of questions. Eg a little heater for cold night, membership for 24hr gym so you could shower/ exercise, best places to park etc..
What struck me the most, was I started out thinking the guy was crazy, but ended up admiring him and thinking maybe he was the only sane one. I often think about this when I see homeless stories, and wonder what I would do if I lost my home.
This is just a side story though, and this guy (and I) had many advantages that other homeless people don't.
Being homeless is no joke, and we shouldn't have a society where people don't have basic shelter.
living in a van down by the river.
This also brings another phrase to mind. It's usually an American term, but I fear that we are inevitably heading to our own 'trailer park trash'. And by this I don't mean the trash is the people.
The 'trash' -no,tragedy- is that the housing situation is so fubar that we'll end up using caravans and temporary accommodation as stoogaps for shortages. And,.once it's established as a substitute for housing, it will never be replaced. Because it's cheaper.
The problem there, as we're already seeing, is arsehole councils taking action against people on private properties, where the people either own the property, or have the property owner's permission, and live in tents or caravans there.
Examples:
Every layer of government has their fair share of blame to wear for this, from the snouts at the trough in the local city councils, to the fat wankers in suits in Canberra. Not one single government has done anything remotely positive to improve the future of housing in this country in the past 20 or so years.
Instead, they've encouraged and rewarded foreign ownership and rich landlords that own dozens of properties. Our monetary policy is tied to a broken measure of financial health, where the snake eats its own tail: higher rent contributes to higher inflation, which contributes to higher interest rates, which contributes to higher rent.
All our governments have done is create the perfect conditions for a massively bloated housing market that's almost impossible for anyone to get into without already being in the middle-to-upper earning brackets.
Councils have to start thinking along humanitarian grounds, and enable people to live self-sufficiently, rather than punishing them for it. It's not hard to see a future where a pensioner dies on a park bench in the middle of winter, because they couldn't afford to rent or pay their mortgage, got permission to live in a van on someone's rural block, and some cunt of a councilor decided a bullshit zoning law was more important than human dignity.
Something has to give.
A bad stroke, a marriage that fails, an inability to work, and suddenly, you are cashing in your retirement and LIVING IN A VAN DOWN BY THE RIVER.
you gotta scream that line with every ounce of your being!
