NSW Labor evicts public housing tenants
Public housing tenants in Sydney’s Glebe are being kicked out by the NSW Labor government after fighting eviction for years. The remaining residents at 82 Wentworth Park Road will be forced out in the coming weeks so that the site can be redeveloped—a process that could take years.
Meanwhile, the 50,000 people who have applied for public housing in the state face wait times of up to a decade, and more than 35,000 are currently homeless.
Residents at Wentworth Park Road have faced constant pressure to move since the redevelopment was announced in August last year. Many have already left, and there have been several deaths in the building over the last year, which residents say is related to the stress of living with the constant threat of eviction.
“Before the election, Rose Jackson, the minister [for housing], came here and I escorted her through the building. There was a promise that she wasn’t going to let the privatisation of public housing happen. But obviously that has all backflipped”, Carolyn Ienna, who has lived at Wentworth Park Road for 30 years, told Red Flag.
After only a few months in office, it’s clear that the new Labor government has no intention of stopping the selloffs or of committing to rapidly expanding the construction of public housing.
All over Sydney, the Labor government is knocking down some of the last remaining public housing sites. The largest public housing complex in the country, Waterloo Estate, is set for demolition; residents in Waterloo South are being forced to relocate this year. Some 750 public homes will be lost in the process, despite intense opposition from residents and community members involved in the Hands Off Waterloo campaign, which was initiated when the redevelopment was proposed in 2015.
Under the redevelopment, most new housing will be private, despite promises from Labor that they would stop the privatisation of the site. Local Labor MP Ron Hoenig wrote to Waterloo tenants before the last election, telling them that a vote for Labor was a vote to keep private hands off the Waterloo Estate. Now, Premier Chris Minns is saying that the redevelopment of public sites into privately run housing doesn’t meet “the definition of privatisation”.
Instead of retaining publicly owned and operated housing, most of the Waterloo site will be turned into what the NSW government terms “community housing”: dwellings operated, and usually owned, by private companies funded by the government. This essentially means that the government is outsourcing its responsibility to provide housing for those who need it, while handing cash to property developers.
At Waterloo South, less than one-third of the new development is earmarked for “social housing” (the government’s umbrella term for public and community housing), most of which will be privately operated. The rest of the building will be entirely in the hands of property developers.
At Wentworth Park Road, it’s not clear what will replace the existing properties. Rose Jackson recently tweeted that the site would be redeveloped entirely as public housing, but the development application currently under consideration is for 43 “affordable housing dwellings” to be built on the site.
Residents are understandably sceptical of Jackson’s claims: the state Labor government is allowing 70 percent of all construction on public land to be run by private developers. Of the few social housing dwellings being constructed, most will be privately operated.
There is plenty of money—and space—for more public housing. Down the street from the Glebe site, the state government is spending $750 million on the new Pyrmont Fish Market. The development will include more than 1,500 luxury apartments, which are being built on public land.
Not only could more public housing be built, but existing housing could also be given to those who need it. There are three times as many vacant properties in Sydney as there are people on the NSW public housing waitlist. Taking these properties out of the hands of investors and putting them to use as public housing would be an obvious place to start.
The ALP, at both a federal and state level, however, is determined to undermine the idea that governments should build and maintain housing for those who need it. Labor is more than happy to allow landlords and developers to make serious profits from commodified housing—the tax cuts given to property developers in the last federal budget are just one indication of this. Labor’s approach means it’s up to us to fight to put people ahead of profit.
Get a Room: Students for Affordable Housing, a student campaign group, will join Action for Public Housing at 1pm on Saturday 17 June at Sydney Town Hall to demand action on the housing crisis. Join the event here: fb.me/e/RJeH4L7b.
