Tuesday 14 June 2011

Seeking Shelter

Myself and my good lady have recently been on the hunt for an new apartment. The decision has been made to end our exile on the wrong side of town and we are now enthused with the prospect of living with a buzzing metropolis on our doorstep. It is not only the prospect of moving back into town which has us excited but also the return to having a home of our own. Don't get me wrong we've been pretty lucky with the housemate we have had for the last year but their comes a time in your life, and in particular when you are in a long term relationship, when you just need your own space. The knowledge that once you shut the door behind yourself in the evening that nobody else is going to walk in is reason enough to salivate at the idea of having our own place again, not to mention being able to break wind at will.

Now as we are both out of our 20s, handsome and charming to boot we are pretty confident that if we get our foot in the door we could have any landlord falling over themselves to get us to rent their property but alas we are not perfect. Only today I was told that an apartment was too good for me over the phone, shocked and incredulous, I didn't quite know what to say. Moments later I had more snappy comebacks then I care to remember such as "Yeah well ... you smell". I wondered if it was the fact that I mentioned that we were both going to do a post grad in the coming year or was it the question about his openness to the prospect of rent allowance that set off the alarm bells normally reserved for the prospect of renting to a faeces flinging primate. Either way it was a shock to the system to be told we didn't measure up and got me thinking what was this apartment like and what in particular ruled us out. Was it the solid gold bread bin or perhaps it was the coffee table legs carved from the remains of a dwarf blue sheep?
These are the joys of being students at our age and not being able to buy our own place, but this has also worked in our favour.

There are a lot of people our age who have either been working since school or went to college straight out of school and have been eligible for a mortgage are now home owners. A lack of foresight by our political leaders and their economic advisers,"Yes we know every other property bubble burst with disastrous consequences but this time it'll be different", irresponsible lending by our bankers and a world wide economic downturn has left a lot of these people in negative equity. Property bought at inflated price with 100% mortgages is worth a fraction of what they paid and is in all honesty much closer to it's actual value. Now there are people all over the country whose hearts quicken with every interest rate announcement from the European central bank, terrified with the knowledge that an adjustment of one percentage point could mean default and ruination. What can be done by the state to alleviate the worst of these problems? Does the state even have a role to play? There are those who would say, no of course not, these people knew the risks that they were taking when they bought at inflated prices with mortgages that they couldn't afford. Why should I who saved carefully and budgeted responsibility now have to subsidize those who borrowed and bought irresponsibility.

I for one believe that it is in our interest to help these people through mortgage relief, moratoriums or some sort loss sharing between mortgage holders and the banks that the citizens of these state have bailed out and shall continue to bail out for a few years to come. The social cost of the failure to meet repayments will filter through and effect every strata of society. Immigration, deserted homes and the break up of families not to mention the very real risk in a spike in the suicide rate from men facing up the to failure to provide for their families are the very real consequences facing these people. There has since the mid seventies been a pervasive move towards a society which is more comfortable with abandoning people to the worst repercussions of the free market, you are now a consumer of risks rather than a citizen who deserves protection. If the state continues to withdraw from the provision of services and support for the worst off in society the affects will be felt by everybody. In saying that I will still do my best to shave as much as I can from landlord rent demands as they choke back the tears while telling me that the bought at the peak of the market with a huge mortgage.

1 comment:

  1. Insightful as always. Like your reasonable and wanton abandonment of apathy. Nice dig in at the end mind you :D

    Flats that are too good for you? More like someone is dodging the tax man and does not want to be on the rent allowance books.

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