Financial stresses of COVID

At the moment I am moving house. This is especially difficult during COVID because public services and some businesses are run at a skeletal level and sometimes only open tradies or “for commercial reasons.” There is no corresponding relaxation of requirements when I leave my rental property. The garden must be tidy and having had a dog the carpets must be steam cleaned and the house fumigated.

Given the amount of green waste required after pruning the backyard far exceeds the green bin you have to take some to the tip. Inexplicably the tip is closed during this lockdown except for tradies. This means the process of disposing suddenly blows out from a hundred for a few hundred dollars. After an infuriating call with the local council, I was told my only option was to take the green waste to my new house. When I told them it was a unit and so did not have sufficient room to store the waste, they responded that I had no other option. Call finished.

I called a tradie who came and without a mask spoke at length the loaded everything up with my help and drove off. Double the price of doing it myself and with another party involved in the collection and disposal of the waste - therefore another potential vector for the disease.

So too with steam cleaning the house. A steam cleaner can be hired at a modest price of around $36/day from Bunnings. Yet during COVID both Bunnings and Coles no longer rent steam cleaners. So then you have to hire a tradie for many times that.

My point is not to complain but merely explain how for some people the financial stresses of everyday life are significantly increased by COVID.

The deeper reasoning here is that financial stability relies so much of predictability. The disruption of lockdown or of COVID in general means that the stability that many need in order to make ends meet is upset. There is a balancing act at play - while the health and wellbeing of many is vulnerable to the disease itself, the health and wellbeing of others is vulnerable to the conditions and buffeting wrought by a lockdown.

This has caused me to rethink my perspective on lockdowns which has become far more ambivalent. Originally I believed that lockdowns were essential because not doing so would result in death - yet consider the sheer number of people running small businesses watching their invested livelihoods fritter away. Or those that will be left deeply in debt because of COVID.

Now the government has stepped in to temporarily mitigate the impact for some Australians experiencing COVID. Yet there are many who do not fall into the government’s criteria to receive support. I have a friend who broke up with her boyfriend. She had to move out. She was working for her local council on a zero hour contract, which was negotiated long before COVID. Another lockdown meant it was impossible for her to show the house so she is paying double rent. She is also ineligible for jobkeeper because of her contract. There must be thousands out there with similar stories.