Tenant's Own Beaconsfield: Tapping in the tunnel?

There was DH thinking she and her fellow renters, public and private, were trapped for ever in their over-priced, ill-fitting cages, with all the weight of negative public opinion, property speculation, negative gearing, mum and dad landlords who must-be-pleased with dubious incentives never mind tenants rights, duplicitous real estate agents, Cherie Burton's questionable if not downright abusive public statements about her constituents, John Howard's roughshod riding over the working class, and the middle-class too, if only they had the sense to see it...

But then she heard, high above her, a faint tapping, and lo, it was Shelter NSW's intrepid team of housing rescue specialists, and there, right over her head (well the bits about negative gearing, institutional investment incentives and fiscal policy, were above her head, anyway) could be heard the sounds of a seminar entitled.

Private rental: how can it work for low-income renters?

and would you believe, the nation's rental situation, which had seemed hopeless, which had even DH so convinced by our Federal and State Government's line of "Sorry, no room for humans - Australia's too poor," that she was thinking of shutting up permanently and contemplating her good fortune compared to, say, the Untouchables of India.... Well, suddenly it all seemed shiftable somehow, and amenable to smart policy thinking.

But more details later of the brilliant ideas from the experts, meanwhile check out the program http://www.shelternsw.org.au/docs/fly0606sem-program.html. It was a treat!