Tenant representative poses in front of an empty house and suggests that it could easily be broken into to

After a famous rent advocate posed in front of a vacant house and suggested that it could be easily broken into, homeowners are furious, while others are praising his message.

Tenant rights activist Jordan van den Berg, also known as the “Purplepingers,” was accused of encouraging squatters by posting an online list of abandoned houses he found in Melbourne, Australia.

The list is intended to help people who are currently homeless or at risk of homelessness to find accommodation, the activist says.

Now he has shared a photo of himself on social media standing in front of an apparently abandoned house in the inner-city suburb of Praharn, five kilometres southeast of Melbourne’s central business district.

Speaking to news.com.au in April, van den Berg said he wanted to achieve three things with the controversial video.

“The main reason for this was to provide accommodation for people who need housing,” he said, reiterating his view that people who need housing should live in vacant housing.

“Secondly, we wanted to get the government to act and tell them: If they don’t do anything about land banking, we can force them to do it.

“People are struggling, and have been for some time, and it’s not getting better. It’s getting much worse. The government is ultimately doing nothing about it.”

“And third, I wanted to remind landlords that it is unethical to leave a house empty during a housing crisis.”

A squatter can become the legal owner of a house if he stays there long enough.

Property owners can still evict anyone from their property before this benchmark is reached.

“Do you think it’s right?”

Mr van den Berg’s campaign attracted media attention and he appeared on The project in April to talk about his controversial plans.

The interview was branded “unrealistic” and “unbelievable” by many on social media.

He was asked about his video and whether encouraging people to become squatters was a sensible solution to the rental crisis.

“I know we’re in a pretty serious housing crisis, but do you really think the solution is to encourage people to stay in private ownership?” The project asked co-host Sarah Harris.

“Let me answer your question with a question. Do you think it is right that thousands of houses are empty and people are living on the streets?” replied Mr van den Berg.

Harris denied this, but asked whether the housing crisis should not be solved by focusing on politics instead.

Later in the interview, panellist Steve Price was unconvinced that there were so many vacant properties for sale, but Mr van den Berg pointed out that he had received over 300 submissions from Australians about vacant homes in their suburbs.

He also admitted that he was aware of desperate people occupying abandoned houses.

“If anyone needs a house, they can contact me and I will send them (details of) an empty house,” he said.

Harris expressed shock that people were “basically camping in abandoned houses with no electricity”, but Mr van den Berg said it was probably better to “camp inside” than sleep on the street or in a park.

Co-host Waleed Aly asked van den Berg if he was encouraging people to break the law, but he pointed out that squatting, if done correctly, is not technically illegal.

Many said he should be “arrested” for his actions, some even threatened to “beat the shit out of him”.

One angry comment on X, formerly Twitter, read: “I would love it if you broke into my house. That would not end well for you, comrade.”

Country in crisis

Australian renters have been hit by sharp price increases in recent years, while rising demand and falling supply have led to intense competition.

According to CoreLogic, rental growth has averaged 9.1 percent per year over the past three years. In the 2010s, however, the average annual growth rate was only two percent.

A survey conducted by the Tenants’ Association of New South Wales found that 82.5 percent of tenants had recently faced an increase in their housing costs.

As a result, 84 percent of respondents were forced to cut their spending and other costs.

Interest group research Everyone is at home found that almost half of all Australians suffer from housing shortages and spend 30 percent or more of their income on housing.

Young people between 18 and 34 have it the hardest. Half of this age group spend 40 percent or more. The current vacancy rate – the proportion of all rental properties available on the market – is just one percent nationally, and 1.1 percent in Sydney.

In Melbourne it is one percent and in Brisbane it is 0.9 percent, according to data from SQM Research. Economists generally view a vacancy rate of less than two percent as a sign of a rental market in crisis.

At the same time, 2021 census data showed that 10 percent of all residential buildings were unoccupied on the night the national survey was conducted.

This equates to more than 1.04 million vacant properties – many of which, according to experts, could otherwise be available to tenants or buyers.