Residents of the Millers Point public housing area in inner-city Sydney face "Sophie's Choice" on the future of their accommodation, Chris Hinkley, of the Millers Point community working party, and a 44-year resident of the suburb, said on November 19.
He was commenting on the decision by the NSW Coalition government to offer 28 non-heritage listed apartments to the estimated 90 remaining residents, in exchange for their agreement to move out of their existing homes.
A letter sent by NSW Housing Minister Brad Hazzard threatens that residents who do not move into the flats will be evicted and their current houses sold. The letter also says the sale of the 28 apartments is "deferred", not withdrawn. This gives no certainty to the mostly elderly remaining residents of Millers Point, who have been campaigning for two years against the forced sale of their homes.
Sociologist Eva Cox has dubbed the government's action a form of "elder abuse". She attributed this to the money-first attitude of the Baird state government.
"If we are serious about understanding communities, if we are serious about understanding people, then the idea that you can just push poor people out because they happen to live in houses that have been around a long time and have increased in value is very brutal," Cox said.
The Millers Point community is currently fighting for more public housing in the area to allow more residents to stay.
Barney Gardner, of The Rocks Public Housing Tenants group, said that more than half the residents could stay if the government made use of the available non-heritage housing in the area.
"These [apartments] would get us up to the 52 or 54 unit mark," Gardner said. "We would only require between 15 and 20 heritage classified two-bedroom units to secure everyone who wants to stay here."
The 28 units quarantined from the sale were built in the 1980s and have no heritage value or appeal to the wealthy buyers who have been paying up to $5.5 million for the larger terrace houses. The government has so far gained $100 million from the sale of homes in the area.
The waiting list for public housing in NSW has topped 60,000. But, despite the Baird government's claim to be using the proceeds of the Millers Point sales to build new public housing, there is little evidence this is actually happening.
The general lack of affordable housing in Sydney, whether to buy or rent, has reached crisis proportions. A serious effort to tackle the housing crisis should be an urgent priority, at the federal, state and local government levels. But none of the mainstream parties show any sign of advancing policies to confront Australia's most widespread social problem.
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