To think that the housing boom-bust is what caused this meltdown but yet the lower interest rates, First Home Owners Grants etc are just going to pro-long the asset bubble by keeping land prices high. We may be mourning the downfall of two-dimensional economics for some time to come.

Thanks to Reuters, Wooster and our friends at Radical Cross Stitch for this one.

]]> http://www.iwanttolivehere.org.au/blog/2008/10/16/rip-boom-bust-economy/feed/ 0 http://www.iwanttolivehere.org.au/blog/2008/09/25/petrol-purring/ http://www.iwanttolivehere.org.au/blog/2008/09/25/petrol-purring/#comments Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:51:07 +0000 K2 http://renegadeconomist.wordpress.com/?p=239 Click here to view the embedded video.

Funny stuff, but oil companies are easy pickings. Where do you spend most of your money? Petrol or Rent? Many joke beer (if only!).

If you want to read some more serious issues we’ve covered of recent:
Pumped Money Supply – No Wonder Oil Peaks
US Banking Intervention video
Bailout brings US Hegemony to its knees
Can the US Treasury learn from mistakes?

Hattip Radical Cross Stitch

It would seem Universities are too busy investing their money into new campuses and ways to attract new students than deal with the very real issue of poverty amongst students. According to a source in Sydney, the University of Sydney and UTS have done very little to create affordable housing for their students in the Chippendale and Darlington areas, but at the same time are buying up even more land and real estate for new buildings. University of Sydney have reportedly just spent millions on their main Camperdown campus with impressive new buildings and are also developing whole new campuses at Callan Park. At the same time the University has been sending out ’starving menus’ to alumni begging them for donations to help hungry students. One University has been offering free food-aid to students, some of which pay an insane $300/week on rent. With the rising costs of living we face a time when students sacrifice their study-time (an education they have to pay for in HECS) to work and pay the bills.

This giving with one hand and taking with the other is outrageous and I’d call it ironic if I didn’t feel this was such a serious issue – our generation is getting totally fucked over! How  can we allow this to keep going?

http://flickr.com/photos/jckolepics/

India’s poor reputation in dispossesing farmers with little or no compensation has come home to bite them in the Communist State of West Bengal. 1000 acres of pristine land was forcibly appropriated for the Tata Motors juggernaut.

Seven farmers have committed suicide in dispair over the lack of consultation. Now the socially conscious Tata company is leaving the state in protest at the poor administrative process, costing them millions of dollars.

Land disputes such as those surrounding the highly contentious Narmada Dam (documented beautifully in Drowned Out), have seen India’s adivasi farmers kicked off the land with no compensation and are soon begging on the streets as slum-dwellers (until they graduate into a sweatshop).

The tragedy of India is that so much land is used inefficiently. Urban centres see the homeless sleep on footpaths, meanwhile large tracts of vacant land directly behind them are empty. Speculators in India don’t use fences. They just trash the building, ensuring that concrete rubble outweighs the ability of the dispossed to set up a living abode.

Meanwhile, the pavement dwellers set up little shops out the front, making something out of nothing and inadvertently assisting the landowner to become richer by creating community. The community essence flows through into higher land values, pushing home ownership further out of reach. Classical economic theory backs this statement up.

We are confident that absentee landlords, possibly still hungover since colonial days, control large tracts of land in rural India. It would be interesting to see a local film maker’s opinon from Singur, India on the dramas that are costing their community on so many levels. Inefficient land use with poor administration sees everyone a loser.

intact - guerilla restoration of a signal box

Located in Shoreditch, London, this ‘dream home’ was a former railway signal box which was transformed to meet the English ‘twee’ cottage ideal. The artists commented that “a simple, low budget and temporary action on a specific site such projects capture the imagination and raise awareness and debate around the spaces that we often pass by without so much as a glance.”

The I Want To Live Here project is also about drawing attention to these oft passed locations. Our neighbourhoods are full of potential homes. We just need a big of imagination to create some ‘dream homes’ for the 270,000 Australians who live it rough every night.

Lisa Dahl making a statement

There’s a wicked image I saw today from artist Lisa Dahl showing silhouetted homes perched on a lush, green vacant land.

I thought firstly how awesome it was that someone took the idea of idle land putting pressure on the market and making it art, and how well it fits into the ‘I Want To Live Here’ Film Competition.

Then I went onto thinking about how artists are able to really spread a message and provoke thought on an issue in the community. Artistic expression is important – but it comes at a cost sometimes to the artists themselves. So how ironic it was that some of these artists, like Lisa Dahl, who vent their rental frustrations into art are the ones that make certain suburbs seem more desirable and trendy with their art and culture…only to be driven out by increased rental costs and the sudden surge of everyone else wanting to live there. Look at Fitzroy, inner Melbourne, now too expensive for the students and artists who made the place what it is today.

I can see the same situation happening in Brunswick now, with Brunswick West and East jumping up in market value by almost 70%; many landlords have jacked up prices to meet the market values touted by the real estate agents and endless queues of eager renters line up hail, rain or shine to inspect an over-priced shoebox.

All the while, vacant land as in Lisa Dahl’s image, sits there waiting for someone to ask “Why can’t I live HERE?!”

rubbertoe - flickr

Picture this:
You’re getting a bit frisky with someone at a bar, and talk of going back to your place arises. You imagine yourself opening the door, and sneaking in ever…so…..quietly… so as not to wake your mum, who has probably been up all night worrying about you and will no doubt have a barrage of questions you have no decent answers for.
“No we’re not serious, mum.”
“Yes I know I have to get up early tomorrow.”
“Yessss, I’ll take the garbage out.”

Oh the glamourous life of moving back home.

Living with less freedom and privacy (and less chance to get laid) in the parental home is one sacrifice many young people are making in order to have a roof over their heads and according to a Galaxy Research survey that was commissioned by ING Direct, one in 10 young adults plan to make that sacrifice and move back into the parental abode within the next year in order to save money for a mortgage deposit or to simply escape the rising rent prices.

Generation Y is also facing a tougher balancing act than previous generations, some facing the choice of food or rent?. A Monash Student Association survey claims that of 450 respondents, 52.9 per cent said they lived at home with their parents because of financial difficulty and 38 per cent claimed they were struggling to pay for accommodation.

With so many young people opting to move back home rather than pay high rents in the hyped rental market, you gotta wonder what it’s doing to the social structures of our generation.

Will we be a generation of 40 year old virgins?!?!

Check this blog post re similar pressures leading youngsters to Japan’s Love Hotels.

The concept spread like wild fire into the following blogs:
Wooster Collective
Makezine
The Vine

speculators free ride

The ladies at Radical Cross Stitch wrote this about the action…and down below their post is a link to our site, which resulted in 100’s of extra webhits….thanks crafters -

Concerned that there are increasing numbers of young people with nowhere to live while there is a ton of land lying around unused while the owners reap huge rewards as the property market delivers the rewards that are always guaranteed when a resource is scarce. And we were asking ourselves when the politicians are gonna realise that something needs to change when land values always go up at a higher rate than wage increases? There is a big connection between land speculation and the 27000 people who sleep it rough every night in Australia.

So we decided that all the boring chainlink fences in our suburb keeping people off the land needed a bit of cheering up.

Shack in the center of Madrid

Carlos del Solar, “Shack in the center of Madrid”: A shack made out of wood, cardboard and plastic suddenly appears in the middle of a plaza in the center of Madrid. On it, one of the ubiquitous standard “for sale” signs one can find in every street in this town.

A comment on the extreme housing situation that has been developing these last years, with prices doubling and quadrupling while square meters get to barely livable minimums. How much can you take…before you start looking for solutions?

Borrowed from Rebel Art.