On the eve of the New South Wales budget, a September 9 rally organised by the National Union of Students (NUS), the student housing group Get A Room and the NSW Greens, called for the housing crisis to be fixed. Speakers called on Labor to end the demolition of public housing and impose rent caps.
Around 200 people rallied and then marched through the CBD to highlight the need for solutions to the housing crisis.
Recently evicted Glebe public housing tenant Carolyn Ienna said NSW Labor must stick to its pre-election promise not to demolish public housing. “There should be no evictions, and public housing should be expanded and available for the whole community.”
Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi told the protest: “We will fight for housing justice like never before. Too many people today are one payment failure away from eviction from their homes.
“We now have wall-to-wall Labor governments on the mainland. But they have no solutions to the housing crisis.
“Let’s tax the super-profits of the corporations and the rich to fund public housing,” Faruqi said.
Other speakers included representatives of NUS, Get A Room and Jenny Leong, Greens MP for Newtown. Leong condemned the massive government subsidies to property developers and called for an immediate freeze on rents for two years.