Batten the hatches, we’re in for a storm

Rents are increasing. It doesn’t just hurt us, it changes the inner city. I see it in the Cross. The familiar characters who give it charm can no longer live here. The interesting characters are usually not the wealthy residents.

There’s less room for shops with character, run by owners with passion. First, they must be profitable – enough to cover the increased rents.

According to free market principles, higher rents should mean surviving businesses are the most beneficial. Profitability, though, is not what makes an area.

Many business will close as the market struggles to find someone who can somehow make the rent – there’s a lot of closed shopfronts.

Vittorio runs the Piccolo cafe in the Cross, one of the few charming cafes with real personality. He owns the premises. I doubt he’d cover market rent.

The free market supposedly means investment which improves affordability. As if. Owners invest to increase rent –  not affordability. When a building is

replaced, the units usually have higher rents. We’re hollowed out – new outrageously expensive units on the one hand, and a diminishing supply of original units

which become dingier and are just very expensive rather than outrageously expensive.

Well … OK, a higher density development could sometimes provide lower priced dwellings – though you’ve forever lost the quality of what it replaced – but you know what dominates.

Since December, rents seem have risen more rapidly than sale prices, at least by a few percent. I expect more people want to rent and fewer want to buy – people still want to rent, but the rich can’t buy stuff on the whim like they used to.

But that’s shuffling deckchairs on the titanic. Rents and property prices increase relentlessly. Population increases and the market

develops. Mobile phones are cheaper and the beaches are more crowded; the rents go up, too. Improved services (including education) play their part.

But we’re all selfish – that’s what the market mediates – and not without cost. Why should our historical presence in the inner city mean others can’t share in it ?

At the other end, the attractiveness of the inner city, and our willingness to pay for it, increases prices to destroy the very thing that attracted us.

Batten the hatches ! We’re in for a storm.

BY JOHN AUGUST

www.sydneyshove.org