source : the age
The federal government. Inflation. Immigration. Negative gearing. Housing density. John Howard. Unkillable oldies. Unkillable oldies with multimillion-dollar property portfolios. Unkillable oldies with multimillion-dollar property portfolios and framed photos of John Howard and incense-burning shrines to negative gearing and franking credits.
Pick your poison, but the bottom line is this. Whatever is responsible for the current housing crisis, you know one thing. You thought your flatmate days were behind you, but between the bathroom drain clogged with hair and toothpaste, and the rhythmic thumping coming from the next-door bedroom (followed, in short order, by a sheepish-looking stranger at the breakfast bench), it seems they’re back. Only this time, the flatmates in question aren’t randoms who came with the house and/or a back catalogue of sketchy references: they’re your adult children.
Craig and Alison Whalland with their grown-up daughters Amy and Jordan, who live at home.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos
Depending on your outlook, this news will result in one of four outcomes. If you hail from a migrant family for whom multigenerational living is the norm, the state of the bathroom drain will prompt little more than a short-lived, impassioned rant threatening an eviction that no one believes will ever come to pass. Disregard entirely the issue of having to make small talk with a sheepish-looking stranger because there is definitely no rhythmic thumping coming from any bedroom, unless someone has incurred granny’s wrath and ducked to avoid the slippers she’s started throwing.
You mightn’t love the ongoing expense of having to supply groceries for your three children aged 36, 34, and almost 32, but when the time came, you just subdivided the available space to create room for a second pantry. Granny and her vast collection of slippers now occupy a bedroom the size of a jail cell, but she’s free to move into any one of the eight investment properties she’s held since the 1970s. She won’t, of course because everyone is perfectly happy with the current arrangement, and no one’s going anywhere without a freshly printed marriage certificate. Housing crisis, indeed.
If you hail from our second group of old-age flatmates, the very sight of a sheepish-looking stranger at the breakfast bench will send the gastric juices soaring up your esophagus, rendering you incapable of doing anything other than honking like a perimenopausal goose.
Your own parents spent your tween-age years warning you not to get too comfortable with your present living arrangements. Then your 17th birthday rolled around and you woke to a packed suitcase, a card containing a copy of the classifieds, and a hearty “see you at Christmas!” Harsh it might have been, but you couch-surfed for a couple of weeks, grew up fast and put a deposit down on your own home, which you basically paid for in Sunny Boy ice blocks and the proceeds of your paper run.
These slacker kids of yours, meanwhile, treat this house like a #@$^%&# hotel. You tried to evict them when they came of age, but they were out for four days, and then they boomeranged straight back. In a moment of weakness you agreed to let to them stay until they’d scraped a rental deposit together. That was seven years ago.
Now they’re all “smashed avocado this, can’t even load the %$#@#&% dishwasher that”. The one upside is that you just wheeled out your speech about How There Is No Housing Crisis Just Kids Who Refuse To Grow Up for the benefit of the sheepish-looking stranger, who has elected not to hang around for breakfast after all. Good riddance. At least you’ve managed to successfully evict someone.
And then there’s you, our outwardly-huffy-but-inwardly-thrilled kidult-flatmate embracer. You didn’t see this situation coming either, but now that it’s here, you’re wondering whether it would be weird if you humblebragged about it on the school WhatsApp group, which (naturally) you’re still a paid-up member of, five years after graduation.
Your kids seemed to grow up in flash, probably because you held them back from school until they were 12 (ostensibly due to lack of emotional readiness, but actually so they could dazzle everyone with their knowledge of algebra and the Cyrillic alphabet).
Personally, you’d be very happy to fortify the nest with titanium and keep the little chickadees close until they’re ready to fly (or in this case, use the heated stairs that lead to the newly renovated second floor bedroom and ensuite that you commissioned as a sweetener compelling them to stay put).
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing, though. Just now you experienced a weird, traitorous thought about leaving the cherubs to their own devices, prompted by your discovery of the sheepish-looking stranger, who was exhausted from last night’s acrobatics and in urgent need of an organic chai latte (which you were expected to supply). The things we do for love. And housing crises.
Finally, there’s Everyone Else. Drawn together by a potent mix of financial necessity, familial loyalty and fanciful hopes of finding something everyone likes on Netflix, this unforeseen return to the flatmate era nonetheless has its upsides. All the crockery matches, for starters. And the present new-old-new living arrangement is governed by one immutable fact: nothing lasts forever, including the kidults’ houseguests. Just ask the sheepish-looking stranger, who decided the place was getting far too crowded, and left for good 10 minutes ago.
Michelle Cazzulino is a freelance writer.
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