A place to live. Surviving the housing crisis

Things are as they are and not as we’d like them to be: that’s what I think every time I have to move out of my home. It is not just in Australia that housing is in crisis. All my adult life in Argentina I have lived in shared flats, renting rooms in a house that is already rented, because getting an apartment is becoming more and more unattainable for the majority. It is estimated that in the country there are more than 3 million of idle houses, what represents less options for whom need to find a home. The very high inflation increases uncertainty and the shortage of properties.

When I decided to come to Australia, one of the things I thought was that I would need as much money to get an apartment as I had invested in travelling, or maybe more: so I decided to travel. Just to give an example of how inaccessible it is to have a home, a fridge in Argentina today costs an average of $300.000, while the current minimum salary is $105.500.

Living in someone else’s house means that you have no choice about many things, from where the furniture is to when you have to leave. It can often happen that you are living comfortably somewhere and an unexpected situation arises that makes you look for a new place to live; it´s time to move again. You just take your stuff and go. I must confess that´s how I am now in Australia: I was forced to live in a hostel for a few months beacause I had to leave the place where I was living, and a Chilean traveller told me about the Working Holiday visa. Three weeks later, I already had my granted.

Housing is another thing about which the Western idea of progress has broken down for me: that ever-ascending linearity that leads to a better place. Moving to a new house doesn´t mean it is better than where you´ve been before, it is just the place you´ve found. Years go by and nothing magical happens: I have to look for a room again. At the moment I don’t see my housing possibilities changing.

To have a roof over my head

Since I stopped being a student and left my city and my state I couldn´t rent again, as I had no guarantees; except for a time when I lived in the mountains, and everything was more informal. There I lived in a house where the owner had schizophrenia and had shouting conversations with himself, at the base of the hill: he told me I had to go the day before Christmas. I found a house on a dirt road where cars couldn´t run, with snakes sunbathing in the courtyard. After that I moved with a woman that channelling messages from higher beings and shouting for silence when I was in the kitchen at night.

When I left the town I lived in a friend´s house because I had no place to live, until I found a room with a bipolar poet who from time to time spent a week locked up in her room. When she asked me to leave I lived in a tent next to a river, giving yoga classes at a campsite. Then I moved to a house that expelled me: I only stayed one day. I was homeless and went to a retreat. After that I lived with someone as fake as a plastic stone. I rented a room in a house with a traveller family and a violin playing at three in the morning.

I moved to another city where I lived in a hostel doing work exchange, for seven long months during wich it was the pandemic. When this cycle came to an end I lived with a guy who didn´t talk to me and only sent me whatsapp messages: it was only one month. I moved to a boarding house that was the closest thing to a home I’ve had in a long time. After living in the hostel again, now as a guest (where the Working Holiday visa came for me), I moved to an apartment with an advanced architecture student and a black cat with a missing paw.

Now I had to leave a house where I was very comfortable. Just adapt to each situation. Matter is changeable and houses are matter.