I CALL THIS UGLY object the ‘NATO Standard NSW Investment Property light fitting’, and once you start looking you’ll see the prick everywhere. It’s been in every house I’ve ever rented. I hate it and everything it represents.

There’s an aesthetic to houses that have this horrible, specific, light fixture. None show any of the signs of being a long-term owner-occupied house (like family-specific renovations, obvious signs of children, or the kind of post-war immigrant vernacular concreting that is disappearing, displaced by money, throughout the Inner West Rental Belt). They aren’t in post-2000 flats which have a different aesthetic of empty money—-there it’s hangover-punishing halogen downlights. These horrible bastards are the Mark of Cain of housing which has been left to the vagaries of returns-on-investment. They are the light that signifies fungible shelter, rented at a yield, maintenance carried out at a fixed rate and schedule whether needed or not.

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