Sometimes I embrace delusions of owning a small apartment. As a single, young, working-class professional with no particular victim cards, the bank will loan me about five cents with a kidney kept as collateral on a 40-year loan. The search results are dire. For hours, I sit there wondering if I’d be prepared to share a laundry with strangers and forego a car space, on the proviso, of course, that I’d have to sell half my furniture to fit into what amounts to a rat cage with a view of someone else’s kitchen.

Most people in conservative media and politics have no idea what this feels like. Their demographic hasn’t been economically stretched since the 70s, and at least then they could still have fun drinking down the pub or going on cheap European gap years.

Young people today have no change left out of $100 for drinks and a simple pub meal. Forget trying to park in the city. Your car is effectively blood money paid to the local council so they can spend it on cycleways and trans flags. Public transport has become a mystery cost thanks to tap-on disguising price rises in a way weekly ticket sales used to discourage. Want to go on a holiday? Are you mad… Even gym memberships, often kept as phantom health goals ticking away in the background of an automatic credit card debit, have been cancelled.

I shit you not, the working sections of Sydney, around the CBD (but no student-dominated Central), have become weirdly … thin. People are walking to work, they’ve given up drinking, they can’t afford to eat out, and with a price tag between $6-$8 they miss that second morning coffee.

Sydneysiders look healthy, but they’re hungry and miserable.

This cost-of-living diet plan is not to be confused with the Ozempic rich waterfront and North Shore suburbs where people who own a spare electric car have developed a concentration camp physique. They pay to be skinny while across the Harbour Bridge, people are glancing sadly at restaurant windows.

And for those who advise these working people to ‘just stay home and save money’, when you live and work alone, the over-priced coffee might be the only smile and conversation you encounter all day.

This generation is scorned for its few lingering pleasantries while they listen to tales of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s with long lunches (those are gone), fabulous Christmas parties (thank HR Nazis), company fringe benefits (lucky if you get a cab fare), and after work pub visits with mates.

Owning a home is still an essential asset, but the gap between what you can rent and what the bank will allow you to buy is vast. That divide is getting worse with every person Labor imports to prop up their Budget sheet.

Scrolling down the housing selection is not only depressing, it is soul-crushing. As has been reported, Millennials and Gen Z will be the first generations worse off than their parents in over 200 years.

So, every now and then, I take safe search off.

I pick my preferred suburb (rather than realistic suburb), disable all the restrictions, and load the page.

And that’s when it struck me.

As sprawling waterfront apartments with three-four bedrooms, car spaces, laundries, and modern kitchens loaded by the dozen, I realised there is no housing crisis for the rich.

The reason those in power like to talk about the housing crisis, but rarely do anything except nod and wink at a nearby developer, is because it doesn’t impact them.

If someone in politics wants to move house because they have another kid on the way, it would only take a week or two to find a suitable alternative. They are spoiled for choice. The housing market for rich people is doing better than it ever has and while that remains the case, it’s hard to see politicians (except for One Nation), getting serious about removing almost a million people (who should not be buying houses in this country) from the game.

I don’t say this as someone who casually glances at the property market. Not only have I personally moved 13 times and owned an apartment 15 years ago, half my family are real estate agents. It’s a topic I am familiar with and the direction this is going in makes me wonder if I will ever feel the security of a home again without finding a husband. Australians should be able to own a home on their own. That used to be our right. This has been stolen from us and I’m sorry but destroying suburbs with high rises or tearing down green spaces or forcing older people to move for the social good is not what people are asking for. They want those who are not supposed to be jumping the queue to leave.

Other nations put their citizens first. Labor is putting the next generation last.

Do not mistake this article as class envy. Thriving capitalist democracies should have beautiful apartments as a reward for people who work hard to move up in the world, but the game has been fundamentally rigged against the young with a mass migration scheme never seen in Australian history. This is not a fair contest anymore. It is a ladder being ripped up.

Flat White is written by Alexandra Marshall. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.