I Want To Live Here

Wed Dec 3rd, 7 - 9pm

Venue: The Order

With a raft of challenging, humourous and even risque films entered for the $3000 first prize, we hope you can attend an entertaining nights activity.

Ten short films will be shown over the night. Then the big drumroll for the winners announcement will see a smile on someone’s face.

The Melbourne Craft Cartel will spice it up with a number of zesty stalls in attendance. Why not do some xmas shopping and support local craft? Yes its all about local economies and helping them thrive!

Comedian Rod Quantock will give us a serve or two on the Great Australian Dream - where has it gone?

Free event
RSVP appreciated

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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.

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Due to the surge of interest in the film comp following the Speed Renting event, late submissions will now be accepted up until Tuesday October 14th, 5pm GMT.

Late submissions must provide a $10 entry fee.

We are hoping that most film makers enter by the official closing date of October 2nd.

We have already received a number of creative entries.

Happy editing!

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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

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thxs 2 http://flickr.com/photos/bubustudio/

With all the hype of Speed Renting, we must remember our main purpose! It’s less than two weeks before entries close for the first ever IW2LH short Film Competition. This is your chance to gain industry exposure, whilst also getting your opinion out on how we can improve housing affordability.

Winners will receive Portable prize packs and opportunities to have your film distributed through their website, giving unprecedented world wide exposure. There are also awesome Media Bags up for grabs from our good friends at Crumpler, whilst 1st prize walks away with a cool $3000. Prize details

*** Think it’s too late? Don’t wait til next year! We have created a special two week extension till the 14th of October. Late fee’s will incur a $10 entry fee payable by cheque or money order to Earthsharing Australia.

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Speed Renters in Action

Last nights event was a huge success with over 50 people attending. CH10 News, the Age and a cast of eager individuals attended. One proactive young guy brought a little print out summarising his interests. Another was only looking for a room with an en suite. It certainly was a diverse collection of people.

The surprise of the night was that there were more leaseholders than room-seekers. The media tells us there is a shortage of rental accommodation. Last night proved that there was a need for more progressive ways to use existing land and housing. Read more of the Additional Resources on the guidelines page to see how.

The overwhelming feedback was positive, with most seeing the benefits of what we were doing as a big plus. Young women were particularly thankful with the opportunity to vet people before inviting them into their home. A number of leaseholders had met a prospective tenant and were off home to work out which one they preferred.

We hope to do another Speed Renting event in the near future. If anyone wants to volunteer to help run the event, that will make it much easier to make this possible. A special thanks to all who volunteered last night and to those who attended.

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Its the land under it that counts!

Media calls have jumped today as interest in the event peaks. Will the opportunity to interview dozens of potential room hunters inspire leaseholders to come and have a laugh at the Speed Renting event? It seems so as many realise they can clean up their junk room and save money whilst they do it.

Today we make the Leader, tonight MX, tomorrow Red Symon’s ABC breakfast and TV too …..

“I was talking to a friend last night and she said ‘I wish I’d had thought of that, I should have had a beer with a guy I’ve got in my house, he is an absolute dork’,” she said.

The speed renting event is part of a campaign to address housing affordability and student living conditions through the organisation’s “I Want To Live Here” film competition.

Coordinator Karl Fitzgerad goes on further to say

“We’ve got a spare garage to rent if you need storage space for your ’stuff’. Every centimetre of this great city must be used effectively for people to live in. To think there are easily 120,000 speculative vacancies in Melbourne whilst the battling renter struggles to pay for 2 minute noodles is a crazed indictment of this era. Land is for people not profit”

Despite such serious topics, the team are preparing for an upbeat night with good music, good vibes, a slapstick MC and hopefully a few ‘ahh’s’ of relief emanating from both sides of the rental market as they meet the perfect people.

More info

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If you’re living in Melbourne, by now you might have heard about the Student Squatters in inner city Faraday St and their campaign to kick Melbourne University into investing in real solutions that address the housing affordability issues facing students.

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?

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How many spare rooms have become junk rooms?!! Gee whizz, we reckon with the way things are today, householders could get prospective housemates to help clean it up and/or take the ’stuff’ to Savers!

All that wasted space is making housing more expensive. Remove the stigma of finding a good person to live with by interviewing a swag of people all in one go at the big event, next Tues 16th September.

We did an interview yesterday on RRR’s Room with a View promoting this hot topic/ event. Webhits went up, news services are interested and registrations are coming along. Forward on this flyer to your friends if you can.

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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.

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