JAMIE HOTTAKE | Outrage | CONTACT
Proving that some rich white men can actually multitask, us poor and impoverished Millennials find ourselves in the throws of two crises at once.
Not only has everything become really expensive but we have to live with the reality that it will stay that way as prices only really go down in adverts. Like my battle with male pattern baldness, we will look at the current state of it all and sigh as we remember today is actually the best it will ever be again.
However, often a turd sandwich is served with a side of chips. Many of us are paying lower rent due to the fact we’ve had to move back in with our parents because our actual rent got way fucking expensive. Perhaps there is no use crying over the spilt milk that is the Australian housing market but how else do you expect my generation to feel about dairy?
Indeed, many of us locked out of the housing market have been fighting it with our tears. Emma Parcelpants (name changed) states her parents were able to help her out with a deposit after daily crying spells about how she could never raise a family in a rental.
In Betoota Ponds, my biracial friend Bevan managed to make an unforgettable impression on a rental agent when he cried for four hours after being asked how he was doing, therefore being the last to leave the rental inspection and remaining top of mind. Because of this, Bevan’s tear ducts were already pumped dry when he received the news the apartment was going to someone who offered more money.
Betoota based TikToker BrieLoCash even managed to talk down a rent increase by crying to their rental agent over the phone and instead of an extra $175 per week is now only paying an additional $171.30.
So it was that I decided it was my turn to give this whole #crying4thehousingcrisis trend a go. Admittedly this was difficult for me as I am house sitting in my dad’s apartment and have so far been unaffected by rate rise that has squeezed my friends like a bunch of yuzus trapped in Byron Bay. After failing to be emotionally affected by my dear friend’s struggles I thought about the tenants my dad had evicted four days prior but to no avail. Eventually, I thought hard about the scene in Avatar: The Last Airbender when the banished Prince Zuko reunites with Uncle Iroh who was never angry at him, he was just sad because he thought the prince had lost his way. That did the trick.
And as the tears flowed down my face I was determined to remember the things I was grateful for; good friends, a lucrative writing job, being free from the tyrannical government of North Korea, Russia and the Fire Nation. Plus, I remembered my dad said I can stay in the apartment for as long as I wanted because he really doesn’t know when he’ll be back from the Isle of Man. Suddenly this old place felt a lot more like a home.
Perhaps our crisis isn’t with ‘housing’ but with ‘homing’. Homes require not the investment of money but of human emotion, the ability to imbue mere walls and doors with attachment and memory. How the simple act of running our fingertips across an empty stretch of wall for one final time can feel as intimate and alive as a farewell embrace. The tears on our cheeks are not a folly born of the attachment to a home that could never be our own – they are salty bullets that will erode the coal black hearts of those who sent us to the streets.
In other words, fuck you dad.
Jamie Hottake was voted the 2011 Young Journalist of the Year in the competitive ‘Nepotism Hire’ category. Since then he has written for The Betoota Advocate and the other mastheads that he pretends he doesn’t write sponsored content for. When he is not writing ‘think’ pieces he enjoys an Imperial Kombucha on the rocks and leaving negative comments on people’s A Song of Ice and Fire fanfiction.
