A letter to my hoarder-mother

Dear Ma, I don’t think you’ve noticed that I don’t like owning stuff like you do. I don’t like the little trinkets you think are “so cute”, I don’t like the musty dusty “antique” furniture that’s falling apart, and I really regret introducing you to Facebook Marketplace. I hate to break it to you Mum, but you’re a hoarder.

I know proper Chinese children don’t criticise their parents, but I know you won’t be reading this. Your stuff has spilled into your duplex home and made most of its rooms unusable. You constantly say you don’t need to throw anything out, it just needs “organising”.

I can only really speculate. What I do know is that you came to this country just after the Tiananmen Square Massacre — but you won’t admit that was the reason you left China. A kind NaiNai took you in as you started working. Her funeral last year was the only time I’ve seen you sob. Looking at your home now, I wonder how much stuff you had when you arrived at her doorstep. You probably didn’t have the six human-sized Chinese vases, or the eight antique lounges and three “very nice wood” dining tables. You probably didn’t have the countless clothes YeYe always brought back from his summers in China — which never made it into your closet — or the stacks of extra textbooks you bought me that I never opened.

I’ve asked you a few times to get rid of some of these things. I mean, you really don’t need the shoes your rent when your lease is up?

Not telling your landlord that you are subletting, according to Fair Trade NSW, violates your Tenancy agreement. Under section 87 of the Residential Tenancies Act 2010, “a landlord may give a termination notice on the ground that the tenant has breached the residential tenancy agreement.” In this way, informally subletting can place your rental into a space of insecurity.

It is important to note that a landlord cannot legally refuse your request to sublet unless they have a valid reason, such as, according to Fair Trade NSW, “if the person being proposed is listed on a tenancy database [for being a] bad tenant.”

Renters should not be placed in a situation where they must risk eviction to avoid it. Increasing rent, lack of available properties and the power largely remaining in the hands of landlords, functions to create immense vulnerability for renters in Sydney, forcing them to attempt to create their own security in a space where it cannot be found. By generating this pseudosecurity, the rental market becomes even more closed off to those who are not currently in it, mirroring the impenetrability of the