Housing crisis 2023 onwards
In 2023 I was rendered house-less for about six months. We have a national housing crisis in Australia which is vast in scale and not likely to be solved soon. The skyrocketing costs of housing of any kind to buy or rent has forced many people to become homeless. Nearly every day our local news media outlets feature a story about a young family living in a tent, or an older person losing their home of many years. There is a strange cold war bubbling away between generations of ‘baby boomers’ and everyone else. The mulitple-property-owning boomers being perceived to have no conception of the plight of younger generations. The state of the property market has created conditions in which generations of younger people will never be able to afford their own home.
Nobody talks about “home” though. In my inquiry about eligibility to take on a mortgage to buy a home, it was always a discussion about “how you can enter the property market”, or “how to secrure your first property”. Naively, I assumed I was inquiring about how to buy a home. Naively, I assumed basic housing to be a human right in a first world country.
A dear friend and long time artistic collaborator, also homeless, bought a block of land with his life savings. There isn’t a budget to build a house (and frankly, there aren’t builders available anyhow). This is, therefore an experiment in off-grid living. I am documenting the progress of the site over the coming years. From dry dusty empty and barren block to, hopefully in time, a flourising native plant garden and fruit tree forest. This is harsh country, with severe weather conditions. But, in these times, you work with what you’ve got, don’t you?
Donated garden shed.
Summer heat is relentless.
Having a tap installed was an early milestone. Water flows.
You feel the seasons so strongly here in the mid northern region of South Australia. Below are scenes - gale force winds damaged a window on the caravan, but chats by the campfire with lunch were wonderful. As each plant goes into the soil there is hope for the future. As plants come into bloom there is joy and celebration.
