The Continuing Adventures Of Your Own Personal Jesus

Following up from my previous entry. I spoke to a guy the other day and we discussed the rental crisis, in particular the concept of rental auctions. "But," he said, "this has been around for decades." "I agree," I replied, "housing has been going downhill for about the last twelve years or so, but rental auctions are a relatively new thing." He was a bit puzzled. For the past six or so years he's had to compete in an open auction to secure rental accommodation and as such that's all he now knows. He's been doing it so long that it's now second nature. He fails to see a way out of all of this. "Don't compete," I told him, "just withdraw from the process." "Not that simple," he replied, "you see it's easy for you, you know what to do and say. However when you're faced with sleeping in the parklands or getting a place then you do what you need to do." It was futile. He pointed ou...

So you want to rent, or you need to rent but are finding it impossible to find a place? You're now walking the streets wondering why landlords and real estate agents have to be such pricks. So what do you have to do in order to secure a decent rental property? Let me tell you, it isn't that difficult. And now I'm going to make it a lot easier with my Few Simple Rules To Renting. You read this and follow the rules and not only will you be in a place so fast your head will oscillate, but you'll be wondering why you were so worried in the first place. RULE 1] BE REALISTIC ABOUT WHAT YOU WANT AND CAN AFFORD Now this is important. You have to be totally realistic with what you want and what you can afford. What you want will probably not be what you can afford, so you're going to have to work a bit to find that middle ground. We all want to live in the CBD, in a four bedroom rooftop penthouse but the facts are that you're not likely to find such a property for und...

Remember those tv advertisements that ran over the past few years about Violence Against Women? I'm not sure if they're still on the idiot box, but they were powerful indictments on how women are frequently bashed and raped in domestic situations. Strong stuff. They offered up a number of solutions and alternatives for women who needed to flee abusers. The tag line was: "Violence Against Women? Australia says no!" Great weren't they? I hated them. With a passion. Thought that they were not only demeaning but also ignorant and insulting. Why? Because they put forward an ostrich approach to domestic violence - the way the ads were presented domestic violence and sexual abuse only happens against women. men are immune. They're all superman when it comes to these kinds of things. Men don't get bashed, or raped, only women do. I always thought that the ads should have gone further and shown men in situations of domestic violence and ran the proper tag lin...

That's right - I officially have no friggin' idea. Mind you, according to the guy who spewed forth that brilliant social observation, I'm not merely an idiot, I'm a dickhead to boot. Great. I've always wondered if hitting the crak instantly turns a person into pyschiatrist. There must be something in this drug that I've not found, yet. Over the last two weeks I've spent virtually every day counselling people about their neighbours. Apparantly they're all arseholes, the neighbours that is, not the tenants. The tenants come in and begin screaming like you'd not believe. There's a lot of reasons for this kind of behaviour, my favourite is the full moon theory, and I know I'm not the only one who subscribes to that. Still, here's what happens. The tenants will come in and start demanding that we move whatever neighbour that exists. Generally it's just some idiot playing the stereo a little too loud, or having a party. Every so often an or...

How to deal with difficult/challenging customers/clients ( Just thought I'd share with you an essay that I've been working on for the past week or so. I started doing it after a few people asked me about the difficult customers we face and how we deal with them. It's also in response to the utterly useless training that we've gotten in the past and I fully expect that said training is across the board. This is what we face, and hopefully you'll find solutions within this on how to deal with some of the more challenging people you'll face on a daily basis. I'll be sure to do follow-ups, so feel free to ask questions or seek clarification. It rambles a bit, but hey, let's face it, it'd sound better in a training enviroment with hand-outs and role plays .) There’s no easy way to say this, so let’s be upfront from the beginning: this will take time. Dealing with difficult and challenging customers/clients is a day to day proposition and one of the mo...

Just a quick one for now. This guy reminded me of a cross between Bobcat Goldthwait and the character in South Park who drinks all the coffee. He came into the office all twitches and nervous tics and stood there waiting. Well, as much as a person can stand in one place bouncing up and down on each foot. When he finally got to me he asked about bond assistance. No problems there. I started to explain. No good. "Slow down!! Slow down!!" You're going too fast." I slowed down and spoke each and every word clearly. Nope, not good enough. He cocked his head and then spoke again. "Arrgghhhh!! I'm not a f*cking idiot man!! Go faster! I got places to go!!" I went faster. "Slow down!! You're going too fast again!!" I couldn't win. I just gave up and spoke at my normal pace. I might have practiced my Russian for what it was worth. He needed a place to stay. After everything I explained, "You have to find a place by your...

I knew she'd be back in, eventually. I'd come across here previously in another office. We'd housed her for the briefest of times, months really. At no stage had she been a model tenant, quite the opposite really. In those few short months she'd not paid rent once and, even better, when she moved she amassed a huge debt because she'd trashed the place. I've seen the photos and they're amazing really. Back doors where you don't expect to find back doors, an inside door smeared with so much excreta that you'd be forgiven for thinking that it'd been repainted, standard car bodies in the yards, holes in the walls, bathroom trashed and wildlife living in the stove. She'd only left that day you can only imagine what kind of a parent allows a young child to live in such filth, filth to the point where there was a neat little pile of excreta in the corner of the child's room. "Don't use the toilet," she must have said, ...

Two ministers, same day, same radio station - you probably heard it at the time, or not. Make of this what you will. Question : Mal Brough joins us now. Minister, the question of housing, you want to know where all the money has gone, how much money does the Federal Government put into public housing and why have you got concerns about it? Answer : Well, I do. There’s been another report out this week which is called The National Shelter and it’s pointing to the fact that we do need more public housing and low cost housing options and there’s no disagreement from me about that. But having been in this portfolio for over 12 months, been to a couple of Housing Ministers’ meetings, I started to scratch the surface and discovered that over the last 10 years the Commonwealth has provided to the state governments just under $10,000,000,000 and the total public housing stock in that time around Australia has in fact reduced by 13 in total but in South Australia the situation is much more parl...