Name: Melis Layik
Age: 21
Dreams of: Being a lawyer, an author and a grassroots organiser
I sit in my new apartment encircled by cardboard boxes, looking at the remnants of tape and bubble wrap strewn across the carpet. I’ve moved house since I last wrote a few weeks ago. I have a table but no chairs. The box of miscellaneous oddities, teeming with craft projects, which I swear I’ll finish some day, is staring me down. It’s a mess, but it signifies a new start. As I look around my glorious heap of knick-knacks, drinking coffee from a cereal bowl, I feel a sense of comfort and ease that I haven’t had in my home for a while.
One silver lining of Covid-19 has been the significant drop in rental prices in Melbourne. It’s meant that I can afford to live by myself for the first time, in a clean, comfortable and central apartment building. Still, it’s not cheap or easy. I still have no job after losing my three jobs this year, so rent takes all of my income from Youth Allowance. I receive money from my parents to cover other costs.
It took a while to get here. I inspected a lot of depressing places in my price range. The majority of the properties I was shown were hotel rooms that had been converted into residential apartments due to the lack of tourists. Most of them were accompanied by kicked-in walls, bizarre smells and fixtures that were falling apart. Some had windows that directly faced concrete walls or worse, no windows at all. It’s remarkable what can be passed off as a living space. Living in a comfortable space shouldn’t be a luxury but what I was offered suggested it is.
I needed to move out as soon as Melbourne’s lockdown lifted. Because during our lockdown, home became a place of discomfort, alienation and anxiety. When I took up the lease on my flat, I envisioned I would be out most of the time, busy with uni, work and friends. Little did I know that cramped box would end up feeling like a cage. When restrictions were tightened I began to feel suffocated. I ended up confining myself to my room for the six-month stretch, with headphones cemented to my ears. I felt isolated within my home. It was paralysing. I was desperate to get out.
I tried to escape my lease earlier, but real estate agents don’t lend much weight to the problems of a 21-year-old renter. I spent weeks searching for a replacement to fulfil my lease obligations. The whole situation felt very disempowering.
Precariousness is not a rare feeling for me when it comes to housing. I’ve lived in various cash-in-hand living situations where landlords have not fixed broken amenities and withheld my bond. My studies in property law have come in handy, and each time I have successfully applied to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and received my bond back. But most young people aren’t aware of their rights as tenants, or how to enforce them.
It’s frustrating because housing struggles are marketed as problems that young people are supposed to experience. We’re “supposed” to live in shitty share houses and cramped dorms. It’s propagandised to us as a rite of passage. But why? Don’t we deserve a standard quality of living? We can’t reckon with real estate agents and landlords because the power balance is skewed from the beginning. Considering our lack of social and financial capital, I believe young people need special protections against this kind of exploitation, including the expansion of social housing.
Right now, though, as I sit here, I feel consoled by the comfort of my new home. The hope that I longed for is blossoming. Last year was taxing and tumultuous, but I feel humbled by its stagnancy. I feel good about 2021. I hope that it brings us joy and connection.
