All the world loves a lover.. except Housing NSW

Caveat Houso! If you acquire a lover watch out! You could end up with all your possessions on the street, waiting for the removalist van to nowhere.

The first thing to note is that if someone sleeps over, don’t imagine that it’s OK as long as they are paying rent elsewhere.

Having recently joined RSVP, naturally DH’s first thought was to get HNSW’s approval for any romantic developments that might ensue.

DH rang the HNSW Tenants Hotline, and in the first instance was immensely relieved to hear that it would not be necessary to invite her CSO to chaperone the first date.


However, the call centre advised that should a guest stay for more than 3 weeks, the department must be notified. Further, to be "on the safe side" it is advisable to let the Dept know after two weeks.

Scratching around for a loophole DH then posed the following question, not mincing any words: “But, what if, say, you have a lover, and you send them home for just one night every 3 weeks for a shower and a shave?”.


Back came the answer to gladden the giddiest romantic's heart: “Legally, that is acceptable”.

But DH’s fantasy of languorous Chateau Houso days lengthening into weeks didn’t last long. And not only because she’s never had any luck whatsoever with RSVP (where desperate housos are not in great demand…)

For that's when the thought struck!

IT’S TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

Running this past a lawyerly acquaintance with some familiarity with the Housing Act, DH came down to earth with a walloping thud.


Yes, opined the lawyerly type, it may be legally true, but if you have a malicious neighbour say, and they dob you in, guess what? You will not be presumed innocent until proven guilty. No, you have to prove your innocence. In the case of the Family Kaphoops next door, it might be their word against yours.

Ah yes, you ask, but what about the Tribunal, the CTTT, surely they will declare on the side of love?

Well maybe.  But HNSW has ways of getting around those old softies.  HNSW will simply cancel your subsidy and demand the back rent. And if you can’t pay, you can be evicted on failing to pay arrears. 

The Stepford Prime Minister... or do the ends justify the means?

Um... DH feels bad about yesterday's comment. We gotta have hope that Julia Gillard's remote-controlled robotic performance is specifically designed to appeal to those resentful ignorami, the swinging voters, and she doesn't mean all the nasty bashing of unemployed people, or the sickening self-righteous palaver about hard-working Australian families.

Perhaps the ends do justify the means when it comes to keeping the awful Libs out.

Remember,, the Libs allowed the current housing crisis to develop. They had 10 years to do something about housing. Yet they did not provide for a single unit of social housing to be built to take the heat out of the housing market. Instead they put billions into private landlord's pockets via rent assistance... thus contributing to the inflation of rents.

Election comment

Gillard is a disgusting sell-out and repellent scab on the body politic. Who tf is she anyway?

Abbott and Hockey are clowns, and the smelly barrel-scrapings of the Liberal Party (which never had much in the barrel except pork for the fatso end of town)

Here in the Sydney electorate, Tanya Plibersek is smart, compassionate and hard-working, can't ask for a better politician. I wonder what she really thinks. I hope she's agonising over the moral dilemma of whether there's anything useful that can be done from within this bankrupt "Labor" party.

The local  Greens would rollover if confronted by 3 men and a dog wearing a Socialist Alliance T-shirt.

Gordon Weiss is quite a nice sensible man, but must be judged by the company he keeps.

Tanya is our only hope now in the Sydney electorate.

We've hit rock bottom folks. Happy voting on Saturday!

Lest we forget: Why we voted the Liberals out

OK, so this is a shameless referral to outdated content in the right sidebar, but DH has little heart for blogging, with Labor so craven, and the media preoccupied with gossip and drivel. It's disheartening to listen to smart women like Fran Kelly on Radio National carrying on like a bunch of hens at a pecking party. Who cares about Julia or Tony's clothes when, frinstance, grannies are sleeping rough. The best argument against voting liberal is to remember some of the awful things they did.

Not that Labor has reversed many of these policies. They're too busy still dancing to the tune of Howard's divisive, free market, racist, class warfare agenda. What a pity they were too gutless to chart a new course while they had the chance. Looks like they'll be turfed out anyway.

Darwinism masquerading as Christianity

• Jesus would turn in his grave to see how Howard and Co created a dog-eat-dog,
  survival of the fittest, the-strong-shall-inherit-the-lot Australia,
  all in His name, meanwhile ...
• Hypocrisy - Abbott's "Right to Life" for disabled people did not extend to the Right to a Good Life, which would have required a decent level of disability funding

Adhockery

• They never spend money on planning or research, the plan was to dream something up overnight when the polls dipped, then send in the army to back it up

The NT intervention

• 
  
  See above

Robbing the Poor to give to the Rich

• the transfer of $3 BILLION from public housing into the pockets of private
  landlords: result: inflation
• the "budget surplus" extracted from the nation's rotting teeth
• the transfer of funding from the poorest schools to the richest based on the sham of postcode

Pandering to religious extremists

• for blurring the hard won boundaries between church and state
• no worries about fundamentalist extremist lunatics if they're Exclusive Brethren adding to election coffers
• inviting Hillsong to rip off the welfare system

Pandering to racists

• thick as thieves with the loony anti-semites of the League of Rights
• Nazi Croat propagandist Lyenko Urbancic leading light of the Liberal party
• playing the Muslim card when it suits them

Robbing Women and Children

• gutting the childcare system set up by Labor. Remember how it came to fruition with the collapse of ABC childcare

Robbing workers of hard won rights

• Serfchoices
• Welfare to Workhouse
• fining individuals for striking
• using the services of a a repressive Muslim state to secretly train strike breakers
• the time-wasting conscription of disabled Australians into pointless low paid
  jobs

The Wedgie Portfolio

• taking every opportunity to “divide and rule” by appealing to resentment, fear, downward envy, xenophobia
• the harassment and villification of battlers via Centrelink while pretending to be on their side

Kafkalink

• the deliverance of the effective CES (Commonwealth Employment Service) into
  the hands of unscrupulous private operators
• Centrelink's punitive and humiliating regimes
• the gutting of Centrelink’s administrative infrastructure subjecting welfare
  recipients to bungle after bungle and desperation-inducing delays in
  payment
• miserable pensions that don’t keep up with the cost of living
• breaching the weakest

The big lie, spin, propaganda

• Is it $1 BILLION dollars of taxpayers money spent on Liberal Party
  advertising since they got in?
• non-core promises
• successfully slandering people with a social conscience as the “elites”, while the real
  elites have never been richer

Muzzling the press

• stacking the ABC board with Howard’s cronies
• Draconian Anti-Terrorism Act 2005
• prosecution of whistleblowers McManus, Harvey, Kelly, check out the details http://www.alliance.org.au/resources/reports_%26_submissions/

Shaming Australia

• Toadying to the imbecile Bush
• Children Overboard
• Christmas Island
• detention centres run like concentration camps
• incarcerating children in detention centres
• Siev-x
• the Tampa

Cricket

• It just wasn't...

Mark Latham: A vignette from Balmain

It was a dark and lonely Sunday night in Balmain, the most depressing time of the week, not long after Mark Latham lost the election.

Think before you speak, Mark

The streets were largely deserted, but there was one pool of light from a cafe in the most prominent spot in the shopping strip, where Darling St crosses Rowntree. The cafe was empty, but for one table right out on the street, where no passer-by could fail to notice Mark Latham, his wife and children. They had Tigers gear on, there'd been a match, but all the other fans had long gone home.

Now this is something you can't prove, but DH likes to think she is highly intuitive, and in the instant she sashayed past,  she thought she caught a whiff of absolute desolation and despair. And a sense of a sad, worried wife determined to stand by her man. The children too were subdued.  It felt sad, sad, sad.

Now at that time, DH really liked Mark Latham, and she thought of backtracking to offer him a bit of human cheer and support. For Balmain still had a tradition of hating a lousy Liberal, and loving a Labor trier. But she was afraid of intruding, and maybe there was a note of "look at me, but don't look at me" in the display, the kind more familiar in teenage rebels with rings through their noses. Again, who knows?

But it's sad to see a big brave man with good ideas and a grand vision broken.

These are not times that honour "characters", eccentrics,  gutsy speech or grand gestures. But perhaps we do understand and care more now about people struggling with mental imbalances, mood swings, and poor judgment.  What to do when people go visibly off the rails, or when their passion for a single truth trumps their effectiveness in a complex world?

For a start, how about not giving them any media rope to hang themselves with?  Let's hope Mark Latham pulls a rabbit out of the hat during his appearance on 9.  For his sake and ours. 

He's right that Labor is absolutely on the nose, but the alternative is too horrible to contemplate.

Other Balmain vignettes on this blog eg:

When Barry met Nathan at the Sackville Remembering Paddy McGuiness 

Federal election: write to your local candidate now

This is an edited appeal from Shelter NSW the peak body advocating for people disadvantaged in housing markets.

Keep housing issues for low-income and disadvantaged Australians in the spotlight ! Write or email your local candidates now, seeking a commitment to ensuring that low-income households are adequately housed.

In your letter you may wish to use the following list from National Shelter's policy document Housing Australia Affordably

1. improved and expanded affordable rental housing – with a minimum target of 220,000 new affordable dwellings by 2020

2. the development of national standards for tenants’ rights

3. increased support to vulnerable households including people experiencing homelessness

4. the development and implementation of a comprehensive National Indigenous Housing Strategy to address the needs of Aboriginal households in urban, regional and remote areas

5. increasing the maximum rate of Commonwealth Rent Assistance by 30%

6. utilising the tax system to provide more targeted assistance to low to moderate income households in housing need – to improve access to homeownership and to minimise house price inflation, especially at the lower end of the market

7. an improved planning and regulatory environment

8. a fairer tax system

9. better integration between housing policy and other housing-related policy areas.

Read National Shelter's Federal Election page for comments on election issues, links to websites of the major political parties, and a range of election resources.