How I Made The Rental Crisis MY Tenant

The year is 2023. Everything is unapologetically increasing in price, except for your wages but you can’t complain too much because elsewhere there are wars happening. There’s also a housing crisis and it’s been 30 seconds since you last read an article about it. Might be a bit of a dud year hey?

For me, this year has been one of the ones where I’ve been constantly counting the things I am grateful for. Yes, my partner and I were asked to leave our rental apartment after six and a half wonderful years but I’m grateful I have family who had space to take us in. Yeah, in those years I became accustomed to city life and my small hometown now aggravates me with it’s relative slow pace but I’m grateful to see local family and friends more often. And of course I miss our lifestyle of coffee at The General, roast pork banh mis on a Friday, chatting with my neighbour Corey from our respective balconies but I’m grateful that it’s something to write about. Kind of.

In front of our balcony where I did most of my beer reviews. (We were not responsible for power cleaning)

This photo was taken on the last day of our move, about 30 minutes before our unkempt cockhead of a rental agent would do the final inspection (not dressed in appropriate client-facing attire in my opinion). Our apartment was empty, council clean-up had already taken away the stuff we put out and we made ourselves smile for a photo, even though we were certain our next rental would be at least 40% more per week for a lower quality living space.

Life, in the form of our unkempt rental agent (who will never end up selling houses), had served us a shit sandwich. I respect that it’s not off the same menu that people in the aforementioned current war zones have been served, but it is the lunchtime shit sambo special written on the chalkboard at the Housing Crisis Canteen.

Having been served such a sandwich, I thought there was only one thing we could do; order a side of fries.

Note: NOT a shit sandwich. Did NOT need to order chippies with this. It was yummy!

Taken in Melton Mowbray, the food capital of the English Midlands, this pic was me fucking around with this stupid dream I had of one day being a travel cooking show host. It was our first trip around Europe which filled us with the mix of adrenaline, wonder and that little bit of fear that feels like it’s somehow good for you. It also gave me the idea that I should write about travel professionally.

Four years later and I was working part time as a freelance travel writer without doing much travelling. Instead I was drawing on my tongue’s last lingering memories of hunks of Stilton melting into grilled onions on top of some hot beef in various ‘Top 10’ articles mostly made up of place I hadn’t actually been.

Katie and I planned on leaving Dulwich Hill and going on a big trip to bulk up my travel portfolio but whenever it was time to make the call, resigning the lease it was always the easier option. While we were anticipating an inevitable rates driven rent increase, we instead were given 30 days to vacate our home of six and a half years. Briefly, we looked at a few rentals (so fucking dire) before realising that without rent commitments it might be a good time to go on that professional travel writing dream trip.

By not giving us the option to resign, our landlord unknowingly gave us the push we needed to finally book our flights, which we did a week after moving out. And with terms like ‘landlord’ and ‘freelance’ being thrown around it made sense to go somewhere as medieval as Europe (in this medieval fantasy, our rental agent is presumably a toll collecting troll who never properly maintains the bridge he is responsible for).

Now it’s a week until we leave and although I’m shitting myself I am so excited. Yes, I miss our old lifestyle in Dulwich Hill but I’m ultimately grateful for the push the end of our tenancy gave me. I can be a pessimistic person but I’ve learnt I am also someone who can force myself to smile when a wonderful chapter of my life is over.

Some people (not me because I’m not religious) like to say when ‘God closes a door he opens a window.’ Some talk about clouds and silver linings. But for me, I’ll stick to my repulsively culinary guns and encourage everyone impacted by the rental crisis to say, ‘when life serves you a shit sandwich, ask for a side of fries.’