Shocking moment real estate boss ‘says the quiet part out loud’ in online stoush with renters

A real estate agent has sparked backlash after a five-word criticism aimed at an activist that exposed the staggering number of vacant homes in the country.

Rental activist Jordan van den Lamb, founder of the website s***rentals.org, organized a community-led banner drop on three vacant homes in Melbourne on December 14.

Mr Van den Lamb, known online as PurplePingers, occupied three adjacent houses on Western Street in New Brunswick with other homelessness activists.

He shared a video of 84 Western Street, with the banner ‘this house has been empty for 15 years’, on Instagram and claimed the owner of the house was not present.

The campaign was launched to expose how many properties are left empty during a national housing crisis.

Social media users were divided, with many criticizing Mr Van den Lamb for his activism.

Nathan Westerbrink, director of Raine and Horne’s Lane Cove on Sydney’s Lower North Shore, was angered by Mr Van den Lamb’s antics and left a scathing response to the video.

“Pay your own rent loser,” he wrote.

An amused Mr Van den Lamb shared a screenshot of the comment, addressing the broker.

“Nothing makes me happier than seeing a director of a major RaineandHorne franchise get angry at my comments,” Van den Lamb wrote.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Mr Westerbrink for comment.

Social media users were quick to criticize the broker.

“He has everything wrong with society,” one person wrote.

Another said: ‘So unprofessional.’

Others praised Mr Van den Lamb and the community for highlighting Australia’s poor housing market.

“Absolutely appalling that these landlords have been able to leave this empty for all these years,” one person wrote.

‘Well done! Broken system. It’s all of Australia. Most of the houses in the region are also empty,” a second noted.

A third added: ‘Well done! Too many people are homeless; houses should not be empty’.

The protest came to an end after police gave Mr Van den Lamb and the other activists an order to move on.

It was the first of many planned protests targeting landlords who deliberately left their homes vacant.

Mr Van den Lamb, who is running for the Victorian Socialists, has previously condemned Australia’s housing market as a system “rigged” for the wealthy at next year’s federal election.

“In a prosperous society like Australia, no one should have to struggle just to keep a roof over their head, especially when hundreds of thousands of homes are empty every night,” Van den Lamb said.

“It is perfectly legal for property owners to leave homes vacant for years or even decades. This is unacceptable.

“Leaving homes empty in the midst of a homelessness crisis is a crime against basic human decency.

‘Australia’s richest people have reaped a huge windfall from property price growth in recent decades.

‘The system is set up in such a way for the rich that they often lose very little by leaving properties empty. This has to change.’

Mr Van den Lamb added that the housing market is currently at a ‘crisis point’, with homelessness growing rapidly and the number of people on social housing waiting lists rising.

“We want to build a movement – ​​of the homeless, of renters, of everyone suffering from the housing crisis,” Van den Lamb said.

‘We cannot expect our parliament of landlords to solve this for us. The majority of them benefit from the current system. People need to take matters into their own hands.’

In total, almost 100,000 homes were vacant or underutilized in 2023 – a shocking figure for every 20 homes in Melbourne, according to a report by tax reform institute Prosper Australia.

That’s enough to house more than 250,000 Australians – which is more than the combined number of people experiencing homelessness and the number of people on the social housing waiting list.

The report, which analyzed water consumption, showed that more than 27,000 homes (1.5 percent of all homes) would be completely empty in 2023, while another 70,000 (3.7 percent of all homes) were barely used.

It also found the highest concentration of vacant homes was in Brunswick East, with 1,214 or 12.7 per cent of properties vacant.