Maria is reliant on JobSeeker. She pays more than 90% of this allowance on rent, leaving her with less than $50 a fortnight to live on. She has lived like this for three years and sometimes goes days without food.

Damn that's such a long time without a job

She rents a rundown house that is “unliveable, basically” and does repairs the landlord refuses to do.

What? Why is she doing a job that she is paying for?

If she is fixing up houses why is she not being paid to fix up other peoples houses?

The trades right now are begging for people, particularly here in Queensland

Queensland is in desperate need of 50,000 workers if it hopes to complete its housing projects, with pay packages to potentially reach into six figures.

The state government currently has $53 billion worth of construction activity in the pipeline with that figure set to jump to $77 billion in the next financial year.

One of those projects includes the aim to build 53,000 new homes by 2044.

https://www.9news.com.au/national/queensland-in-need-of-50000-construction-workers-for-sixfigure-pay/987d8447-8408-40cd-9f7b-8b168d585d51

She fixing up houses for free while living on welfare, crazy, absolutely crazy, there has to be more to this story, she can't handle stress, has some sort of medical issue, no way would I be painting/repairing or doing any sort of work on a landlords house for free while I'm out of a job that pays 6 figures for the same thing

[–] searabbit@piefed.social 10 points 2 weeks ago (5 children)

A few years ago, I lived in an apartment that cost about $600 usd (~$800 aud?) a month. I had 3 roommates, my room was a loft that I couldn't stand up straight in, had no AC unit or window screen in hot humid weather, the common areas were dilapidated, and the bathroom was covered in black mold. I was a student at the time so I didn't mind knowing it was temporary but one of my roommates wasn't so lucky. She tried to get the landlord to do something about the mold because it was impacting her health, but this slumlord decided to go malicious compliance on her/us for daring to expect livable conditions, so he made our bathroom unusable while his handyman "took care of" the mold and "allowed" us to use another unit's bathroom that I heard was even more neglected somehow (I used the university bathroom instead).

My point is, she's likely doing repairs herself not because she knows what she's doing but because she's scared of a slumlord retaliating if she asks anything of them. It's a horribly stressful way to live as I've seen first hand.

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