An angry boomer has been filmed accosting a group of protesters who were demonstrating against landlords who leave their properties empty when Australia is in the middle of a housing crisis.
The encounter was captured by tenants’ rights activist and founder of the sh**rentals.org website Jordan van den Berg, who posted it to his popular Purple Pingers Instagram page.
Mr van den Berg, who is standing for the Victorian Socialists at next year’s Federal election, had organised the ‘occupation’ of a row of three empty houses in Brunswick, a vibrant inner-city suburb about 5km north of Melbourne’s CBD on Saturday.
The three houses have allegedly been left unoccupied for years – one for 8 years, one for 10 years and one for 15 years.
A man approached the group, who had erected a sign which read ‘This house has been empty for 15 years’ in the front garden of one of the houses.
‘You’re all idiots… all of you,’ the man said.
He added: ‘You’re all idiots. This is not your house, this is nothing to do with you. You should just move on.’
‘This is nothing to do with you, it’s private property… you should all leave.’
A neighbour who lives across the road from the three vacant houses, told the group,’You’re all idiots… this is not your house, this is nothing to do with you… you should just move on.’
Mr van den Berg (pictured) had organised the ‘occupation’ of a row of three vacant houses in Brunswick, a vibrant inner-city suburb about 5 km north of Melbourne’s CBD
One of the group asked the man: ‘I just want to get this straight… it’s idiotic to have empathy for homeless people? Is that right?’
One of the group said, ‘private property is for greedy c***s.’
The man snapped back: ‘You’re almost as intelligent as he is’, and pointed to the man who asked if it was idioti to have empathy for homeless people.
‘You’re not very bright are you,’ the man said.
A police officer arrived and escorted the man from the scene.
As he was being led away, he was asked again: ‘It’s a pretty simple question I’m asking you, is it idiotic to show empathy for homeless people?
At this point the police officer said: ‘Just move on.’
The man was asked to move on by police officers. The police officer calmly said to the man, ‘I understand your frustration, but you’re making it more difficult than what it is.’
The video cut to the man talking to the group of protesters before he was escorted away by the police officer.
One protesters could be heard shouting: ‘It’s stolen Wurundjeri land, d***head’.
The man told the group they were ‘all wrong’ before two police officers shepherded him away.
‘Please don’t touch me, please don’t touch me,’ he said as he attempted to brush the officer’s arm away.
The police officer calmly said to the man, ‘I understand your frustration but you’re making it more difficult than what it is.’
Mr van den Berg told Daily Mail Australia the man isn’t a landlord of one of the vacant properties, but a neighbour from across the road.
He claimed that the man was the only one who was not supportive of their protest and said he shared it ‘in the interest of well-rounded coverage’.
‘We spoke to a number of the other neighbours as well, and they were actually, quite lovely,’ Mr van den Berg said.
‘I want to thank all the neighbours who came out in support and expressed their kind of disgust at the fact that some of these houses had been empty for more than a decade.’
He said some of the landlords were at their properties earlier in the morning.
Mr van den Berg encourages squatters by maintaining a list of abandoned homes that he tells people to occupy if they are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.
He said the three house in Brunswick were not being occupied by squatters and the group were asked to move on by police, which they complied with.
The prospective Senate candidate had strong words for landlords who leave their properties vacant for years.
‘Landlords defending the right to leave a property empty for 15 years should get a real job,’ he said.
‘We shouldn’t have homes without people, while there are people without homes.’
In total, nearly 100,000 homes sat empty or under-used in 2023 – a shocking one in 20 dwellings in Melbourne, according to a report by tax reform institute Prosper Australia.
The report, which analysed water use, found that over 27,000 dwellings (1.5 per cent of all homes) were left totally empty throughout 2023, with a further 70,000 (3.7 per cent of all homes) barely used.
***
Read more at DailyMail.co.uk