Noisy helicopters

[Colin_T]

I need to get a big sheet of white plywood and paint "YOU ARE NOISY" then stand outside at night and wave at the police helicopters flying around waking everyone up at 3am. OMG it's almost every night. Polair (police air) doing laps around the neighbourhood spotlighting criminals so the cops on the ground can get them.

OK I understand the need for police and they want the baddies off the street, as do the rest of us. But there is a point where a helicopter hovering over a bunch of units for an hour at a time at 3am is not acceptable. I can feel the walls, floor and air in the unit vibrating from the chopper. I can hear it from miles away because everyone is asleep and there is no white noise.

The state government is bsing about not having any money to give public servants a pay rise but they can afford to run a chopper every night. Hmmm, me thinks they aren't telling the truth about the finances.

I have written to the government and didn't get a response.

Anyone got tips on how to shut them up, besides getting some sams (surface to air missiles)?

 

[MaloK]

Document the noise.
Contact local authorities.
Join forces with neighbors.
Raise public awareness.
Seek legal advice.
Get things moving.

The same job could be done with simple Drones that are much more silent in operation and could even bring great savings in $$$ for the city once in production.

 

[MattW]

I know GMP has been trialing drones in areas around Manchester. I think Cheshire Constabulary has been using them too, mainly for areas deep in the countryside. I'm surprised the Aussie rozzers aren't using them. The helicopters over here too are a pain, where I live has seen an increase recently due to stolen bikes/cars.

 

[gwand]

I had the same problem when we first moved to Baltimore in 1983. We lived in a neighborhood with a fair amount of crime. Helicopters hovering all the time. The only solution we found that worked was moving to another neighborhood.

 

[Colin_T]

I had the same problem when we first moved to Baltimore in 1983. We lived in a neighborhood with a fair amount of crime. Helicopters hovering all the time. The only solution we found that worked was moving to another neighborhood.

My lol icon at your comment wasn't about the crime but moving to a new area. I would love to move to another area but there's no houses for rent in this country. We have a major housing crisis and over 1 million homeless people in the country. That might not sound like much but we only have 24 million people here.

--------------------

Document the noise.
Contact local authorities.
Join forces with neighbors.
Raise public awareness.
Seek legal advice.
Get things moving.

The same job could be done with simple Drones that are much more silent in operation and could even bring great savings in $$$ for the city once in production.

The local authorities are the ones using the choppers

I don't know if they could use drones here because we are under 2 flight paths and there are no drones allowed near flight paths in case they bring down a plane.

 

[MattW]

I would love to move to another area but there's no houses for rent in this country. We have a major housing crisis and over 1 million homeless people in the country. That might not sound like much but we only have 24 million people here.

I heard it was getting very bad over there. I have some relatives that live about a 3-4 hour drive outside of Perth and they wanted to move closer to the city region. But because of the costs, it was deemed cheaper to build their own house on a plot which they are now doing.

 

[Colin_T]

I heard it was getting very bad over there. I have some relatives that live about a 3-4 hour drive outside of Perth and they wanted to move closer to the city region. But because of the costs, it was deemed cheaper to build their own house on a plot which they are now doing.

The housing here is ridiculous. I am paying $330 a week for a NRAS listed 1 bedroom unit with no insulation, no back or front yard, it's infested with rats and insects, the front door isn't secure and the owners don't do work order. And it's in one of the lowest income areas with a really high crime rate. NRAS listed properties are meant for low income/ poor people and are rented at 20% less than normal rent and the federal government pays the home owner the difference. In 2026 the NRAS listing here runs out and rent will go up a lot. It has also been going up at least once a year since I got here 2 years ago and other 1 bedroom units here that aren't NRAS listed are around the $400 a week mark.

The average worker gets $800 a week. I'm on a disability pension and get $600 a week. When the NRAS runs out I will be back on the street because I simply won't be able to afford rent. Most 2 or 3 bedroom places go for $600+ per week now. Before covid they went to $250-300 a week.

Rental properties also have hundreds of applicants for each property. Real estate agents don't even look at all the applications, they just skim through and find whoever is offering the most money and let them have it. It's no longer owners asking $200 a week for rent and 2 or 3 people say I will give you $180. Now its rent starts at $500 and how much you offer above that is up to you. It's literally a bidding war with the person offering the most for rent getting the place. Thats not how housing should be in any country.

If you want to buy a place, you bid against hundreds of other people and prices are crazy. Houses that used to sell for $400-500,000 now going for over a million. And the government is still allowing foreign overseas investors with millions of dollars to spend, to buy houses and land instead of saying no way buddy, it's for Australians first.

Then building your own home is another story with land being locked up by councils and new stamp duty and fees being added. And there simply aren't any builders to build the places. In the last 12 months about a dozen major building companies have gone bankrupt and the houses they were building still haven't been finished.

To top all of this off, the federal government brought in over one million immigrants last year and they competed directly for housing. And because they were immigrants invited here by the government, they got priority housing over people that were born here.

The housing situation here is crap and not going to get better any time soon. It's all caused by the state governments not building housing during the last 20 years and the poor and low income earners are paying the price.

We have women with young children living in tents on public parks now. It's not safe for them and kids should not be living on the street. I got raped when I was on the street in 2016 and I'm a 6ft tall grumpy old bastard. What chance does a 5ft 6inch tall woman have when she is trying to protect her kids and all they have between them and the predators is a nylon tent. It's fuplie appalling.

 

[gwand]

That is a terrible situation. With all the demand for housing, I’m surprised the private sector building businesses haven’t stepped up building homes for sale and apartments for rent. How could building companies go bankrupt when there’s such a demand for housing?

 

[MaloK]

They have hundreds, if not thousands of red tapes to go trough and many project are simply dead pan obstructed from the start.

In my city a simple modification to a highway ramp turned in a multi years fight between environmentalist fighting to save a Northern Leopard Frog environment.

The ramp was impeding 20 feet wide on the said environment for a distance of 100 meters on a 27 acres site.

This modification would have saved 910 car crashes since 1987 and is still a dangerous hot spot when you are forced to merge directly without an acceleration lane.

During summer there is always little pieces of cars all over the place and during winter there's full of traces that let think that something went wrong...

But the Frogs are doing perfectly fine.

 

[GaryE]

The private sector isn't building because costs here are high. They can make a much higher profit building McMansions in the woods (for the wildfires...) than they can with affordable rental spots in smaller cities. This isn't a rich city or a wealthy region. Housing here can't be done cheaply, as our climate is harsh.

A lot of our housing was bought up by central Canadian corporations during the pandemic, and they are holding on to those units, jacking up the prices and speculating. We have an affordable housing shortage and houses sitting unoccupied (awaiting renovation...).

I don't think there's been a serious social housing project since the post war generation built hundreds of cottages 70 years ago. They're still well used. The one hopeful sign is that house prices are starting to fall. As someone who owns a house and someday might have to sell it, that shouldn't be in my interests. But it is, given the mess we've gotten young families into.

 

[Back in the fold]

@Colin_T they aren’t telling the truth about their finances . I have been told by pilots that helicopters are the most expensive thing there is to fly . For every hour in the air there is five hours of maintenance . That’s why outfits that run helicopters have two or more . One flying and one being wrenched on .

 

[TNG]

The housing here is ridiculous. I am paying $330 a week for a NRAS listed 1 bedroom unit with no insulation, no back or front yard, it's infested with rats and insects, the front door isn't secure and the owners don't do work order. And it's in one of the lowest income areas with a really high crime rate. NRAS listed properties are meant for low income/ poor people and are rented at 20% less than normal rent and the federal government pays the home owner the difference. In 2026 the NRAS listing here runs out and rent will go up a lot. It has also been going up at least once a year since I got here 2 years ago and other 1 bedroom units here that aren't NRAS listed are around the $400 a week mark.

The average worker gets $800 a week. I'm on a disability pension and get $600 a week. When the NRAS runs out I will be back on the street because I simply won't be able to afford rent. Most 2 or 3 bedroom places go for $600+ per week now. Before covid they went to $250-300 a week.

Rental properties also have hundreds of applicants for each property. Real estate agents don't even look at all the applications, they just skim through and find whoever is offering the most money and let them have it. It's no longer owners asking $200 a week for rent and 2 or 3 people say I will give you $180. Now its rent starts at $500 and how much you offer above that is up to you. It's literally a bidding war with the person offering the most for rent getting the place. Thats not how housing should be in any country.

If you want to buy a place, you bid against hundreds of other people and prices are crazy. Houses that used to sell for $400-500,000 now going for over a million. And the government is still allowing foreign overseas investors with millions of dollars to spend, to buy houses and land instead of saying no way buddy, it's for Australians first.

Then building your own home is another story with land being locked up by councils and new stamp duty and fees being added. And there simply aren't any builders to build the places. In the last 12 months about a dozen major building companies have gone bankrupt and the houses they were building still haven't been finished.

To top all of this off, the federal government brought in over one million immigrants last year and they competed directly for housing. And because they were immigrants invited here by the government, they got priority housing over people that were born here.

The housing situation here is crap and not going to get better any time soon. It's all caused by the state governments not building housing during the last 20 years and the poor and low income earners are paying the price.

We have women with young children living in tents on public parks now. It's not safe for them and kids should not be living on the street. I got raped when I was on the street in 2016 and I'm a 6ft tall grumpy old bastard. What chance does a 5ft 6inch tall woman have when she is trying to protect her kids and all they have between them and the predators is a nylon tent. It's fuplie appalling.

Oh man, that’s a tough neighbourhood you’re living in.

We can agree that house prices and rent in major cities are way too high, but there is only so much land available near the cities for the ever increasing population. To increase supply, you’d have to knock suburban houses down and build strata units or high rises, but try telling that to inner city homeowners who lobby local governments to “preserve the characters of their neighbourhood”. I agree though, that the state governments let their guard down when it comes to building social housing.

As to migration - well, as the population ages you need more and more workers to pay taxes to provide community services and support retirees. You need around 3 full time workers to pay their taxes to support one retiree, so unless we’re all self-funded retirees it's hard to see a solution to the exponential increase in population. It’s doesn’t matter if the workers are migrants or locally born, the need for housing remains the same.

All residents compete for the limited supply of housing, be they recent migrants or locally born. Those with more income will outbid those with less. Low income permanent residents compete for the limited supply of low rental properties, but migrants do not receive preferential treatment – there’re no questions in the government's housing application form asking if one is a migrant or a native born.

As to the collapse of construction companies, we can lay the blame on the increase in prices of construction materials and the lack of labour. Houses sold off-the-plan are typically fixed prices with little rooms for price adjustments, so construction companies find it difficult to absorb construction price increases.

As for the noisy helicopters . . . . . .

 

[Colin_T]

We can agree that house prices and rent in major cities are way too high, but there is only so much land available near the cities for the ever increasing population. To increase supply, you’d have to knock suburban houses down and build strata units or high rises, but try telling that to inner city homeowners who lobby local governments to “preserve the characters of their neighbourhood”. I agree though, that the state governments let their guard down when it comes to building social housing.

That's what they have done here. Developers have been buying up houses and shoving units on the blocks. Super high density housing with tin roofs and no trees or green areas. My backyard (10ft square grey paved area) hit 47C last week and regularly hits 60C during summer. The entire area is like this and it's only going to get worse.

As to migration - well, as the population ages you need more and more workers to pay taxes to provide community services and support retirees. You need around 3 full time workers to pay their taxes to support one retiree, so unless we’re all self-funded retirees it's hard to see a solution to the exponential increase in population. It’s doesn’t matter if the workers are migrants or locally born, the need for housing remains the same.

If you have over 1 million homeless people in your country, you don't bring in 1.2 million immigrants over a 12 month period to make the problem worse. And the total number was over 1.2 million because the government brought in people for 2 years. A bit of common sense from the government would have reduced this problem but they didn't want to listen to me or their advisors. The pm did his thing and made the issue much worse.

The people coming here from other countries had homes and could have easily stayed there a couple more years until the housing crisis was over but that didn't happen. And the number of skilled migrants that came here was about 1 in 4, so 3/4 of the people that came here (900,000 of them in one year) have no skills and are just adding to the problem.

All residents compete for the limited supply of housing, be they recent migrants or locally born. Those with more income will outbid those with less. Low income permanent residents compete for the limited supply of low rental properties, but migrants do not receive preferential treatment – there’re no questions in the government's housing application form asking if one is a migrant or a native born.

They do over here. I had 2 groups of immigrants move into the street I lived at before ending up on the street in 2016. Both groups didn't speak English as a first language and both got 4 bedroom homes with a new car for coming here. They told me they were given the properties and vehicles as part of the arrangement to immigrate here. One group was from Africa and were fine but terrified of dogs. The other group were middle eastern and set up a gang called the A-Team (the cops and I both laughed at that) and they started making and dealing drugs from the property. Older people on the forum will remember the A-Team from the 80s TV show

I have been waiting for public housing for 24 years and am still waiting. I have spoken to people that have been given public housing in this state and a number of them were immigrants and had only been here a few years and they got housing before me and I have been waiting since 2000.

There may not be anything on the public housing application form or other forms but the government does make deals with immigrants to get them here and part of the deal includes accommodation.

 

[GaryE]

We are veering deeply into politics here - I'm as guilty as the rest of us, but we should veer away....