Tell us what you really think, Belle

Thanks, Belle Property. This charming little reminder of how some real estate agents really view us tenants was dropped in our inbox this morning.

Clearly it’s supposed to be funny. Can you imagine your landlord finding it in their letter box and having a little chortle? How hilarious that it is so easy to remove someone from their home, like changing clothes. Perhaps they even hoped for some controversy! There’s no such thing as bad publicity, right?

Hey landlords, don’t like your tenants anymore? Did they ask for repairs, or question a rent increase? Maybe you just don’t like they way they look. No worries, just get your agent to give ‘em the flick. As non-property owners they’re vermin, barely human, certainly not worthy of a home. Its rare that such a dismissive attitude is so clearly drawn out.

What’s most frustrating about these kinds of attitudes prevailing in real estate agencies is that avoiding them is easier said than done. When you’re looking down another 30 applications, eviction day is coming up fast and at least this place doesn’t have obvious mould problems, knowing your property manager thinks your vermin doesn’t rate as highly.

The thing is though property managers need tenants. Sales agents don’t, except to use our furniture to make a place look homely. But a property manager without tenants is like a mouse without cheese, scrounging around looking for some other way to make a living. We might be vermin to you, but we pay your wages.

UPDATE 20/11/2016. Belle Property has responded to this post with the following message.

"We apologise if any offense was taken as a result of these Property Management flyers, it was never the intention. We in no way believe tenants are comparable to vermin and we apologise that it has been interpreted in this way. It was intended as a fun light-hearted message, which evidently wasn’t achieved. We are happy to discuss this further offline if there are any further queries. We will cease to use this marketing material effective immediately."

Also posted as a Facebook note here on our Facebook page. Like us for all the latest from the TU!

On this day in history - reshaping public housing

According to the internet, 17th century German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler calculated that the universe was created on this day in the year 4977 BC. It turns out Kepler was a little off the mark, with later theories putting its origins at closer to 14 billion BC. Of course, we have no scientists here at the Institute of Tenancy Cultural Studies, so we'll leave that particular discussion to others.

Johannes Kepler of Stuttgart.

His grandfather was a landlord.

But this day bears significance for us, too, and we can't let it pass without a note.

Ten years ago on this day, as many of us were marvelling at the invention of YouTube, contemplating the maiden flight of the impossibly large Airbus A380, or waiting with bated breath for the next instalment of the Star Wars movies (The Revenge of the Sith) and Harry Potter books (The Half Blood Prince), the Carr Government's then Minister for Housing, Joe Tripodi, announced the Reshaping Public Housing reforms.

These reforms sought to do a number of things with the intention of making the public housing system fairer. In particular, they sought to "end the policy of public housing for life" by offering fixed-term tenancies with a review of eligibility at the end of the term; and "allocate all public housing on the principle of strongest housing need" by focusing eligibility rules to assist tenants and households whose need go beyond mere questions of affordability. In addition, the reforms changed the way public housing rents are calculated, ensuring that tenants on 'moderate incomes' would pay 30% of income in rent, instead of the 25% paid by tenants on lower incomes.

But like Johannes Kepler's apparent attempts to date the origins of the universe, these reforms have fallen well wide of the mark. The combined effect of fixed-term tenancies with reviews of eligibility, and reduced disposable incomes for tenants on slightly higher incomes, has been to ensure tenants' make tough choices about how and when to take on work. Extra earnings could result in less money in the short-term, and a loss of housing in the medium-term. In the result, there are fewer people leaving public housing of their own accord, and this puts immense pressure on the portfolio.

The principle of housing on the grounds of strongest need has lead to an increase of residualised disadvantage within public housing. Combined with reduced options for sensitive allocations across the portfolio, because of the decrease in the number of housing 'exits', the pursuit of this principle is perhaps responsible for the rise of 'anti-social behaviour' and complex neighbourhood disputes within public housing communities - which is now seen as one of the key policy challenges by some in the social housing sector.

It also combines with the State's over-stretched health and support services to the extent that while a person's housing needs are being met, other significant needs may not be. This often exacerbates the problems that have lead a household into public housing in the first place - placing tenancies at risk from the outset, and making issues caused by this residualisation all the more acute.

The impact of these reforms, and their failure to achieve the stated aims, has been well documented. We've drawn attention to them in our research, and pointed them out on our blog. More recently they've started to turn up in important discussions such as the Auditor-General's report into making the best use of public housing, and even, as we understand it, a number of responses to the Department of Family and Community Services' Social Housing in NSW discussion paper.

This is positive news, because ten years of these terrible policies is ten years too long... It's well and truly time to reshape the reforms.

Bad landlords in history: the Hares

The Institute of Tenancy Culture Studies presents a study in an allied field: Bad Landlords in History.

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In the 1820s, in Tanners Close, just off Edinburgh's West Port, Margaret Hare ran a lodging house. Her husband, William, was, like many of the lodging house's clientele, a labourer, employed digging out the Edinburgh-Glasgow Union Canal (actually, he was Margaret's second husband, and formerly a lodger in the same house).

(Old Edinburgh)

Sometime in 1827, one of the Hares' lodgers, a dissipated veteran called Donald, died, owing 4 pounds in rent. What's a landlord to do?

(a) give him a decent burial - brotherhood of man and all that;
(b) inform the relevant charities - it's their duty to do something; or
(c) get your husband and one of his mates to sell the poor man's corpse to an anatomist for dissection in front of a paying audience?

Margaret Hare choose (c).

So William and his mate, William Burke, another navvy on the canal, filled Donald's coffin with bark and hauled his body over to Edinburgh University, where they found Dr Knox, surgeon and private anatomy lecturer, who happily paid 7 pounds 10 shillings for the body and didn't ask too many questions.

The transaction thus completed, what's a landlord to do?

(a) repent and confess the whole sordid business to the authorities;
(b) try never to think of it, or Dr Knox, ever again; or
(c) consider who amongst your lodgers would make a good corpse for sale?

The Hares choose (c).

Another of the Hares' lodgers, an old miller named Joseph, wasn't dead yet, but he was sick – so William Hare and William Burke plied him with whisky, then suffocated him. Knox paid well for the corpse. With no more likely candidates amongst the lodgers of the house, the Hares began inviting drunks, beggars, prostitutes and other indigents into the house, to be dispatched by Hare and Burke, and their corpses sold to Knox for dissection.

This enterprise came undone in October 1828, when a couple of guests in the house discovered the body of Margaret Docherty, with whom they'd shared a drink just the previous night, stashed under a bed. The police were alerted, but found no corpse at the Hares' lodging house; but when they later called on Dr Knox, there was Docherty's body on the slab, ready for anatomy class.

William Hare was arrested, along with Burke. What's a landlord to do?

(a) confess and pay the price of one's crimes;
(b) exercise one's right to silence; or
(c) do a deal for immunity from prosecution in return for becoming the Crown's principal witness against one's co-accused?

William Hare choose (c).

Faced with Hare's evidence, William Burke confessed, was found guilty and, on this day 183 years ago, taken to the public gallows and hanged. The Hares went free. (But not entirely unpunished. So the story goes, William Hare was shamed, set upon by a mob, blinded and eked out his days as a beggar. As for Margaret Hare - what's a landlord to do? She emigrated to Australia.)



If the tone of our account of Burke and the Hares is a little jocular, that's because it's a form of self-preservation: the horror of these crimes is difficult to contemplate. In the course of a year they murdered not less than 16 persons, and subjected them to indignities beyond death, all for filthy lucre. Writers and artists have been fascinated: Burke and the Hares have inspired a Robert Louis Stevenson story, no less than seven films, and numerous mentions in Ian Rankin's tenurially significant Rebus novels.

Indeed, the first poetical response to the crimes was probably that of the trial judge, who sentenced Burke not merely to be hanged, but to be thereafter dissected in the same anatomy theatre as his and Hare's victims. And so he was, with the presiding anatomist writing in blood taken from Burke's head and his flayed skin tanned and tooled into a card case. Burke's bones and skin remain on display in museums in Edinburgh today.

And this whole bloody history sprang from a poor lodger's rent arrears, and the greed lurking in the hearts of two bad landlords.