ANU evicts residents from historic home
By Nadine Behan
Students living at Old Lennox House, which has been low cost accommodation on the Australian National University campus for over 30 years, were given seven days, notice to vacate their homes on March 19.
The ANU recently commissioned fire and safety reports which it is now using to claim that Old Lennox House is in a hazardous condition and must be vacated. Critics of the reports claim that the buildings come well within the building laws and fire safety regulations.
The run-down state of the premises is a result of many years of neglect by the ANU and the Students Association, which has been renting the premises to students.
Old Lennox House has Interim Heritage Listing. The buildings are over 80 years old — some of the oldest in Canberra. The ANU is having a study done, to be submitted to the Heritage Council, as to whether they are worth keeping.
This is in the context of plans for that part of the campus to be redeveloped as a science and technology park.
The residents spent the weekend deciding whether to stay on and resist ANU moves to shift them or to comply with the legal letter they received terminating their right to be there. The ANU is offering to relocate the residents and subsidise any difference in rent until the end of the year.
The residents feel that if they go, the buildings will deteriorate further and Heritage protection for them may not be secured.